


But A Walking Shadow

by fluffernutter8



Series: Bend Their Course [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/M, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-03-28 20:58:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13912092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: Steve and Peggy are finally settled into a comfortable (if slightly unconventional) life, not realizing how quickly everything can be shaken and realigned.





	1. Chapter 1

Ella starts school. Peggy takes the morning off of work (she and Steve had traded _quite_ the significant glance when they’d gotten the letter informing them that the first day of kindergarten would involve an orientation with recommended parental attendance; both the Carters and Sarah Rogers would have been incredulous at the very idea) and then calls her office to cancel her schedule for the afternoon. She hadn’t thought she would be so affected by helping Ella find her cubby or sitting on the floor with her and learning the good morning song.

She and Steve end up in a coffee shop after they’ve been dismissed, tucked into a corner, stirring mugs absently. No one gives them a second glance, not for their strange contemplative silence, and not out of recognition, which is the case more often than not these days. Steve has, after much concerted effort, managed to achieve some stubble, and he dyed his hair months ago, the brown somehow sufficiently disassociating him with the public image of Steve Rogers. Peggy hadn’t liked it at first - she would startle awake beside someone who looked half a stranger - but it was necessary for them to live the life they wanted, and now she actually thinks the small changes fairly handsome.

“I didn’t think I would care this much,” Peggy says quietly after a while. “But now it seems to be sinking in that we might actually pull this off, and the effort of such a future—”

“‘S daunting.” Steve ducks his head, giving a little shake, a little laugh, but it seems more puzzled than anything else, lacking his good humor. “I’m so happy most of the time, and we’ve worked for that, we’ve earned it.” He says it fiercely, the tone implying just what they’ve done and sacrificed to earn it, just what’s been done, but then turns lost as he faces her. “I just don’t know that I believed it until now. And I’m not sure what happens next.”

Peggy looks into his face, the little bend to his smile, the slight, wrinkled seriousness of his brow, the strange, elongated angles of his sideburns because he can’t bring himself to tell his barber that he prefers them shorter: hers, all hers, her partner, foundational. She grasps his hand.

“What happens next?” She smiles for him, deep and full of time. “Whatever we want.”

* * *

Steve decides to go back to school. He’ll be a nondegree student, and it’s just for one class a week - Ella gets out of kindergarten at noon, after all - but it feels significant. He sits at the kitchen table with Peggy leaning over him, half in his lap, and they peruse the course catalog (they’d had to call to specifically request a physical copy). He’s always been interested in history, and he has plenty still to learn, but he’s a little afraid that his own face might turn up somewhere along the way, so he rejects that. Business and economics hold no appeal to him, and he can’t quite bring himself to choose just one language to focus on.

In the end, he decides on a course on Buddhist art and architecture that is listed as fulfilling art history, anthropology, and religion credit. Peggy buys him a new notebook for the occasion, a heavy, official-looking one rather than the cheap spiral-bounds that his classmates carry. His class is only on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, but he finds himself going to the campus more often than that, doing his readings at the Starbucks and setting up meetings with a writing tutor: he’s never had to write papers before, and his first attempt shows that he needs quite a bit of practice.

He’s in the library, highlighting an article on the various uses of viharas, when Nick Fury finds him. Steve glances around by habit, although he knows that Fury is careful (paranoid) on a very particular level, and that few people are likely to be by the the third floor language and literature section at 10 AM on a Monday anyway. He’s right; the area, only designated as a quiet zone, is silent now. As he gestures for Fury to take a seat, he frowns a little, both because the man was already doing so without invitation, and because he hadn’t realized the way he’d unconsciously sequestered himself up here, away from everything.

“Captain,” says Fury, and it tugs at something in Steve’s spine. He snaps the top back on his highlighter deliberately, but keeps it in his fingers.

“Director.” He hasn’t seen Fury since Ella’s last checkup at the Triskelion, probably four months ago.

“Looks like you’re working hard for that A.”

“Trying to. It’s been a while.”

Fury makes a vague sound of agreement. “Been a while since we’ve seen you around, too.”

Steve says nothing, forcing himself to face Fury. He and Peggy had considered having him go back to work for SHIELD now that Ella was a bit older. But leaving his job hadn’t just been about caring for their daughter, and going back to running missions on more than a very part-time basis would change things for their family beyond just their babysitting budget. He would be putting himself in danger regularly, perhaps enough danger that he would eventually fail to come home. He and Peggy trusted that she would be able to take care of Ella if that ever happened, but he was doing whatever possible to avoid that circumstance. Giving up most of his work for SHIELD was the easiest way to do it, as much as it plagued him every time he turned on the news or read the occasional mission briefing.

He’d lost his family before he even knew he had them. He wasn’t going to do it again to satisfy his own guilt. That would just bring more, from both sides. At least now he can keep part of his conscience clear.

He opens his mouth to tell Fury some part of this, but his words are overridden. “I sent Agent Romanoff on a highly classified mission last night, accompanying the STRIKE team on an extraction of some SHIELD hostages. She was also there to acquire some information for me that was stored on the ship’s computers.” He recounts all of this blandly, calmly. Steve is glad he had not been there. He doubts that things were as clear-cut as Fury tries to make them sound. “The information is essential to one of the largest projects SHIELD has ever attempted.”

He slides a file folder out from beneath the table. Steve looks at his face for another moment before accepting it, but he does not open it. “After New York, we knew that we needed to take the upper hand both on Earth and beyond it. Later we discovered things that reminded us that there are always ways we’re going to be surprised, and that we need to try to defend against.”

Steve understands that he means Ella, a potential weapon or point of leverage through no fault of her own. He swallows against the rock in his gut and opens the folder. Whatever is inside won’t help, but he’d rather know. The only way he can protect Ella is by knowing.

“It’s called Project Insight,” says Fury as he flips through the pictures. Somewhere in his mind he recognizes the Triskelion’s glass elevator in the distant background. “Three next generation Helicarriers synced to a network of targeting satellites. Once we get them in the air they never need to come down.” He taps one of the pictures. “New long range precision guns can eliminate a thousand hostiles a minute. The satellites can read a terrorist's DNA before he steps outside his spider hole. We gonna neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen.”

He hears the sound of the paper crumpling in his fist before he registers the action itself. He thinks of his mother, how she would always squint and point a finger and say, “You’ve anger in you for half a dozen, so don’t let me catch you using less than double that to keep it in.” He’d defied her over and over, but he knows there’s a difference between kids fighting in alleys and attacking the head of a global intelligence agency.

His voice comes out like a punch anyway, low and glaring. “The people I fought back in the day, they're still used as the emblem of evil, the symbol of the worst of what we can do to others. Do you think Nuremberg was for nothing? Do you think Eichmann in Jerusalem was just for ratings? We give people trials for a reason. This–” he gestures sharply to the folder, trying to encompass the enormity that the pictures barely touch. “This isn’t justice. This isn’t protection. It’s SHIELD holding the world hostage, deciding who’s committed a crime, who might someday, deciding what even constitutes a crime. And that’s assuming SHIELD is always going to be the one in control of it. What happens when some government, some terrorist organization, decides that they want to be the ones pointing a gun at everyone on earth? Maybe they won’t call it a safeguard, but do you really think there’ll actually be that much of a difference?”

Fury stares at him for a moment, flint-faced, military. Then he smiles. “I was hoping you would say that.”

“What?” Steve blinks, quickly, but his face betrays the way he’s been caught off-guard. Peggy laughs at him when they play Uno at home.

“Sometimes when you’re up in that glass tower,” says Fury, “you lose sight of things. Apparently I remembered just in time.” He looks out the window, and seems to decide something. Steve can’t even guess at what, can’t even guess at what this is all about.

“Places to go,” Fury tells him, looking at his watch and standing. “Keep an eye, Captain.”

Steve glances down at the folder once more. “Wait.” Fury turns. “Why’d you come to me with this?”

“Thought you’d be the kind of person to remember the important things,” says Fury. He raises his eyebrows, spreads his arms, indicating the quiet stacks, the dusty carrels, the dry, aging scent of barely touched books that can practically be seen in the air. “And you’re out of the game. No one safer.” With a nod, he moves behind a bookshelf. Steve doesn’t bother to follow; Fury is already gone.

* * *

His paper gets lost in his mind as he delves deeper into Fury’s file. There’s a quick note about the engines, how they can stay up indefinitely after launch. Steve winces, thinking about the idea of a forever with a threat hanging overhead. Squinting, he can see the Stark Industries logo on some of the parts. He can feel his face tighten, wondering how much Tony knew, how much he was told, if he’d ever even bothered to sort through the files he’d stolen from SHIELD before the battle in New York to find out exactly what they were capable of.

He ends up with only the closest thing to a headache he’s had in a long time, no more of his paper written, and an embarrassed excuse when he goes to meet with his professor.

Office hours are only in the afternoons, so Peggy is set to pick up Ella. She texts before she leaves the office, and then sends a quick video of the two of them on the Metro as they head home. Seeing the two of them - Peggy’s confident arm around Ella as she films them side by side, Ella’s concentration and easy knowledge of her mother’s approval as she recounts the refrain from _Caps for Sale_ in an exaggerated whisper - is the first thing that makes him smile all day.

He finishes on campus around two in the afternoon and gets on the Metro himself. He tries to finally read through the article he’d given up on earlier, but gives up again. Making a quick decision, he gets off the train after only a few stops and decides to run instead. As he starts, he dials Peggy.

“Hi, Peg.” She has him on speakerphone when she picks up; he hates that. Background noises are so loud to him that they become distracting.

“Hello, dear.” Steve starts to move faster without even thinking about it. She calls him darling, sometimes, but this is new. And though he wants it to be just a nickname experiment, something she’d absently tossed off, he automatically pictures her being forced to talk casually with him while being threatened. “How was your day?”

“It was fine.” Thankfully, running always makes his voice sound unnatural. As capable as he knows Peggy to be, there is a breaking point for everyone.

Before he can flip the question and try to get a grasp on the situation, Peggy does it for him. “I hope that your study date went well. I know your partner can be challenging to work with sometimes.”

She knows he almost always studies alone; she must have spoken with Fury. “We talked about some interesting stuff, actually. I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”

“Oh, I suspect I know everything by now,” she says breezily. “But we can all discuss the specifics when you get home.”

It’s the “all” that gets him. Unless Fury’s file contained a cartoon section he’d missed, none of it would be interesting or appropriate for Ella. Steve turns it over in his mind; he cuts it close crossing the street, dodging a couple of cars and ignoring the horns. It must be Fury there now. He can’t quite decide whether that’s cause for gratitude.

“I’ll be there soon,” he says. She starts to respond, he can hear the first syllables of her answer, but they’re overcome by louder sounds: shouting and a crash, and what he thinks must be gunshots.

He shoves the phone in his pocket, not caring if he’s actually turned it off. He doesn’t even notice the cars anymore, doesn’t care that they’re noticing him. He puts his head down and just runs.

* * *

It’s all over by the time Steve gets home.

Peggy stands near the doorway, talking to a woman. Steve, focused on examining Peggy, takes a minute to recognize Sharon, Peggy’s only family and one of their favorite babysitters, out of trust and proximity, and because Ella likes her. She was also, Peggy had quickly realized, Fury’s watchdog; they’ve mostly allowed that, as she hasn’t interfered until now.

“Peggy?” He clenches a hand on the doorjamb, not angry for now, just weak and relieved.

Sharon glances over at Peggy. It takes Steve a moment to interpret the look. When he sees the evaluation of it, the way she scans to make sure seeing him isn’t causing a loss of equilibrium, he gives Sharon a look of his own. She should know not to underestimate people like that. She should know not to underestimate Peggy.

Peggy stands. He wants her to chastise him with a smile (“Really, Steve, we were doing perfectly well without your dramatics”) but she just walks over to him. He hugs her, knowing he’s still too tense to comfort or be comforted. She smells a little like flame and gunpowder, but that’s familiar on her. He rests his face in her hair, only noticing the rest of the SHIELD agents around the room when he forces himself to straighten. The agents glance away quickly, going back to their cataloging of the room.

Steve moves back, keeping a hand on Peggy’s upper arm. “Where’s–”

“In the playroom.” Her relief reflects his own. They’d asked Tony to help them with the basement playroom as soon as they bought the house. Though they’d filled it with toys and art supplies and play equipment so that Ella would enjoy spending time down there, it also had reinforced walls, hidden doors accessible through hand scans and passwords, and a storage area with a supply of canned goods and flashlights. Tony had claimed he was coming to stay with them in the event of catastrophe. Steve and Peggy hoped that catastrophe would never come, but prepared for it anyway. “I sent her down as soon as Fury arrived.”

“Why did he come here?”

Peggy shakes her head. “He was injured. He didn’t seem to have much information about exactly who had attacked him, but they’d done quite a number. Apparently he considered our house a good place to lay low.” The sharpness of her lips tells him that she finds this choice just as distasteful as Steve does.

One of the SHIELD agents now speaking with Sharon glances over toward them. Steve unconsciously squares his body a bit, moving to block Peggy. When he realizes what he’s done, he shamefacedly moves back. Peggy just smiles at him. He drops his head a little lower, hoping for as much privacy as possible. “Did he say anything else?” Steve asks.

“Not much,” she tells him, but the look in her eye makes him think that she’d have a different answer if they were really alone. “He’d mentioned a few things, maybe even some things you know, then you called, and then we were interrupted.”

Steve allows himself a long blink. “I think I heard that part.” He wishes he was in bed, muffling laughter with Peggy as Ella tries to build one of her blanket forts around them all. She hasn’t perfected them yet, and they keep collapsing.

Peggy nods. “The first shot came through the window.” She doesn’t bother indicating, knowing that Steve can see the hole and the icy, radiating cracks. He feels suddenly, drastically angry: he’d replaced that window himself. “It hit Fury in the chest, right side.”

“Are you sure it was meant for him?” Steve asks, everything tight inside him.

“It was a difficult shot to make.” Peggy sounds sure. “I was across the room. Odds on that it was a skilled marksman hitting their target rather than a miraculous accident.” She points to a spot behind the sofa. Looking around the room, Steve realizes how carefully all their furniture is placed, how tactically. No time for those thoughts now, though. “I pulled him down, applied pressure. Sharon apparently heard. She came through the back, called it in, and took over. I told her to make sure the basement stayed closed.”

“Let me guess the next part,” Steve says, trying for normalcy.

She smiles at him, quick but piercing, and for a moment he has his normalcy. “He was fast. I was lucky his motorcycle was parked a block away. Gave me a good twenty seconds to give chase.”

“And?”

“I shot him, and not just once,” Peggy says, a clench to her jaw. “Two bullets, one center mass – he knocked that one right out of the air; he was fast, like I said – but one to his shoulder as well, and that one hit. He’ll need treatment, or he’ll be slowed by a hell of a lot of pain.”

“Anything noticeable about him?”

“Around your height,” Peggy says immediately, squinting just briefly to facilitate recollection. “Awful hair, dark colored. Dressed in dark clothes too, some kind of lightweight armor. And he had a metal arm.”

Steve has no idea what to do with that information. He files it away for later.

“I think he planned things carefully,” Peggy says thoughtfully. “I couldn’t hear the ambulance for Fury for another minute, but he took the motorcycle in the exact opposite direction that they would come from, as if he already knew the route.”

Steve nods. Fury had been injured earlier, showed up at their house randomly and without warning, and then been shot moments later. Either this mysterious assassin had been planning for such a contingency, or he had been able to gather detailed information and formulate a plan quickly. Regardless, it makes him seem formidable.

Sharon comes over. “We’d like to offer you a safehouse, at least until we know more about what happened.”

“Thank you,” Peggy says with that mixture of grace, tact, and firmness that Steve has always admired. “We’ll discuss it.”

Sharon nods, going to step away again. It’s unnecessary. Steve and Peggy trade a glance, and they already know what they will have to do. Their house feels unsafe now, as if it’s been placed on the map with a red star and an arrow. Ella can’t sleep here tonight, and trapping her in the basement seems cruel and passive and cowering. They don’t always like SHIELD, but they’ve trusted them until now, and a safehouse seems like a good option. But there’s still the matter of the assassin. He isn’t strictly their problem, but he’s made himself into one, and now the only question is which of the two of them will go with Ella and which one will go hunting.

“I hid the shield in the ironing cupboard after the last time Ella found it,” Peggy finally says. “Make sure to get it before you go.”

Steve tries to smile, as if this is normal now rather than the most, worst excitement they’ve had in years. “You know I like my shield with a mountain fresh scent.”

* * *

They split up, or at least move across the living room from each other. She calls Natasha, although they know she’s probably already heard, and might even be on her way to the hospital. He’s tasked with calling Tony.

He can tell it’s a bad week for Tony just by the way Pepper picks up the phone in Dubai or Denmark or wherever they are. But when Steve says, breathing carefully, “Fury was shot, here, at the house,” Tony swears and his tone straightens because he knows that what Steve means is, _There’s a SHIELD agent wiping blood off my living room floor right below where my daughter sleeps._

“I’ll be there in four hours,” he says, then pauses to listen to Pepper. The words are too blurry to understand specifically, but he recognizes the practical, firm tone, reminding Tony of his responsibilities. Tony responds to her, muffled, then sighs directly into Steve’s ear and says, “Twenty-four hours. Don’t do anything too stupid, Rogers.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s doesn’t want to do anything stupid – the appeal of chasing metal-armed hitmen is nothing in comparison to keeping up _sotto voce_ commentary with Peggy as they watch _Sofia the First_ , Ella sitting in his lap and poking him while telling him with a furrowed brow, “Daddy, it’s time for _listening_ ” – but sometimes stupid finds him regardless.

When he hangs up the phone, Peggy has already finished. Nat’s typically less chatty than Tony, and now probably upset about Fury, pitched into her brand of stony distress that means quick, professional answers.

“She’s going to the hospital now,” Peggy says, which probably means she’s halfway there.

Steve brushes a hand through his hair. He knows it looks different now, darker, but it feels the same. “I should probably head there too.”

Peggy nods. “What will you do after?” After a visit, or after he gets confirmation about Fury’s...status.

“Go play hero, I guess.” He gives her a slight, slivering smile.

There’s nothing about her that changes significantly – maybe a shift of her shoulder, a tilt of her head, no more – but she seems somehow firmer to him. “No,” she tells him. “You’ll come home to me.”

“Yeah.”

Her nails are a bright, Ella-selected purple today, shocking against his skin as she grips his arm. “No, Steve. You’ll come home.”

The force of her fingers, the directness of her gaze: for a moment he fears that she is about to kiss his mouth with the desperate confidence he’d felt before he’d boarded Schmidt’s plane. But instead, she leans up and presses her lips beneath his ear. He shivers; he always does, there, and she knows that.

It rights him.

“I’m coming home,” he tells her, the words working so hard for him, for her.

“Of course you are,” she says. “No need for dramatics.” He laughs, trying to believe her.

They bring Ella upstairs, keeping her away from the windows, suddenly nervous that her shirt, glittery green, is too eye-grabbing even in the closing gray light outside. She hadn’t realized Steve was home. She hadn’t realized Fury had been there at all.

“Is it time for dinner? Can I play after?” She smiles with a winning casualness, trying to make them forget that it’s a bath night, seeming not to notice the cold, shut feeling of the house, the lack of illumination or kitchen smells.

Steve lifts her up, trying not to squeeze too tightly. “You’ll have to talk to Mama. You two are having a sleepover tonight with Aunt Sharon and some of her friends.”

“Why?” Ella frowns. Even when things deviate from their usual schedule, there’s a range of normalcy. Peggy rather than Steve picking up from school: normal. Unscheduled sleepovers with Sharon on a school night: decidedly not. “Are you coming too?”

“I think it will just be a girl’s night tonight, sweet,” Peggy says, a hand on Ella’s back and her shoulder touching Steve’s.

Ella grins but then obviously, inevitably, asks again, “Why? Daddy, where are you going?”

Steve’s been there to tuck her in nearly every night she can remember. But he’s been away enough, he and Peggy try to be honest enough, that he knows what to say. Still, he has to swallow to keep his voice steady. “I have some work to do, Ella Bea. There’s some people I have to help out.” No mention, of course, that those people might be them.

There’s something in the situation that strikes too close to home, not only in the literal sense. He’s kept away from these incidents for so long that going back seems to hold an increased danger, enhanced because it is no longer routine. And there’s an awful feeling in his chest that something more is going on, and that discovering it will be full of anguish.

He lets out a smile anyway, memorizing the weight of Ella in his arms, the heat of Peggy by his side. “Anyway, I don’t do too well at girl’s night. My makeover was no good last time.” He squeezes her once more and then sets her down.

“I’ll practice on Aunt Sharon,” Ella promises solemnly, catching his hand and holding it with a serious delicacy. “So I’ll be ready for next time.”

* * *

Steve feels a little better seeing Sharon by the car that’s going to take Peggy and Ella away. Then she hands the keys over to another agent and his stomach drops an additional ten stories.

“Be safe,” he tells Peggy by the car door, once Ella has been buckled in and settled with a tablet and headphones, her strawberry-patterned overnight bag on the floor by her feet. Most of the agents have left, except for Sharon and Agent Kelley, scrolling through her phone in the front seat.

“Let’s both resolve to be,” she says, and leans over to give him a last hug. “Be safe with this, too, and smart. It’s Fury’s last gift,” she whispers in his ear, and slips a USB drive into his palm. She’s in the car before he can ask anything else.

“I can bring you to the hospital,” Sharon says from over his shoulder as his family drives away. He hastily tucks his hands into his pockets, hoping that it looks casual.

The car turns the corner. Steve shakes himself quickly. He glances back at the house: its careful, joyous lawn with the flowers they’d planted and a few of Ella’s toys forgotten in the grass, their handprints on the mailbox, the steps where he and Peggy sometimes sit and have a drink in the evenings.

The front window with its blue and gray curtains and the carefully catalogued bullet hole in the center.

Steve digs his hands deeper into his pockets, feeling the USB. “Okay,” he says quietly to Sharon. “Let’s go.”

* * *

The woman looked familiar. The soldier tries to picture her again: dark hair, hardened mouth, body an angle of destruction as she shot at him. Yes, she was familiar somehow, the image of her butterflying against his mind. The framed photographs that he’d glimpsed in her living room as he positioned himself for the shot - there had been something familiar there too.

He brushes it off. People look like other people. He needs someone to attend to his shoulder. Whoever the woman was, her family in the photos, none of them can matter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Familiarity with Winter Soldier is...fairly important to following this chapter. Also it's a good movie!

Fury is dead by the time Steve gets there. He passes Sitwell, and one of those guys who looks like he’s on the STRIKE team, and finally spots Hill for an eye-glance. She nods him into the room where Natasha stands, jaw pulsing, over the body.

He stays against the wall, giving her time, until Hill comes back. She’s the best kind of military, the kind that makes him want to salute not out of protocol but from honest, absolute respect.

“I didn’t think you were in DC,” he says to her quietly as she passes.

“Came back early,” she returns, voice hard-spined but just as quiet. She steps further into the room, approaches Natasha from careful distance, and says respectfully, her eyes down, “I need to take him.”

Nat doesn’t move until Steve prompts her. She touches her palm to Fury’s head one final time, closes her eyes, and between blinks, her tears disappear. She spins out of the room. Steve follows, if only for lack of anything else to do.

But as soon as they’re out in the bright business of the hallway, she grabs his wrist. “You’re with me, Rogers.” She lets go, but he follows her down the hall. It feels familiar. It feels like a mission now.

* * *

Peggy maps their way through the city. Ella barely notices that they’re in a car, engaged with something on the tablet. She doesn’t typically get a lot of time on it.

They’ve been driving for about fifteen minutes when Agent Kelley, stopped at an intersection, answers her ringing phone.

“Yes, sir. I’ll put her on.” She hands the phone to the backseat with just the briefest look. “For you.”

Peggy keeps an eye on Ella as she takes the phone and holds it to her ear.

“Ms. Carter.” She tries to determine if the voice, firm and clear despite a slightly slurred edge to the syllables, is familiar, but she doesn’t think she’s met the owner. “This is Alexander Pierce.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Pierce.” That explains it. Peggy knows him by (remarkably good) reputation only - his work with the World Security Council, his Nobel nomination - but she’s as disinclined to trust him as she is to trust anyone with such power. Obviously, there’s no need to let him know her stance on these things.

“I apologize for the call, especially after such a trying day, but I’m afraid that there are a few questions we need answers to.”

Agent Kelley’s eyes keep darting to the rearview mirror. Either they’re being followed, or she wants to keep watch on what’s happening in her backseat. Peggy calmly adjusts Ella next to her. “Go ahead, Mr. Pierce.”

“It’s my understanding that Nick Fury had just shown up at your house when he was shot. Do you have any idea why he might have been there?”

“He had been very badly injured even before arriving.” Peggy’s familiar by this point with modern forensic techniques. Even back in the day, doctors and scientists did have some understanding of things. If she said nothing about the preexisting injuries, the deception would be discovered quickly. “My assumption is that he knew the lengths that Captain Rogers and I have undergone to keep our home concealed and protected and hoped to take advantage of that, to avoid whoever had injured him in the first place.”

“And did Nick say anything to you once he was there? Mention who he might have thought had come after him, or why?”

“He was largely incoherent, I’m afraid,” Peggy lies easily, allowing just enough regret into her voice to seem plausible without making it seem as if she had any deeper relationship with Fury. “I had just begun offering some minor first aid when he was shot fatally.” Luckily she had really had a chance to put a couple of bandages on Fury as they’d talked which would bear out the story for her.

“The whole thing is just terrible.” Even Pierce’s casualness is controlled. Something prickles along Peggy’s shoulders. “Nick and I were friends for many years. I hate to lose him, and I’m going to do everything I can to find out what happened to him.”

“I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to be of more help. And of course I’ll be available for as much assistance as much as I can in future.”

“Very much appreciated, Ms. Carter. Now would you mind letting me speak to Agent Kelley again?”

Peggy hands the phone back toward the front seat. In the time it takes for the agent to reclaim it and put it to her ear, Peggy has regretted whatever reliance she and Steve ever had on SHIELD and the World Security Council. As Agent Kelley answers, “Yes, sir,” into the phone, Peggy’s been angry at herself for allowing the one time it mattered to be the one time she’d let down her guard, trusted someone just this much and put Ella in danger. As Agent Kelley ends the call and flicks her eyes back toward Peggy once more, a plan is already in place.

The only luck on Peggy’s side: the agent is so focused on accessing her gun holster without being noticed that she drives for another minute. They stop at an intersection beside a shopping center. Peggy drops her own phone on the floor.

“Sweetheart, would you pick that up for me?”

Ella gives a little hum and bends toward the floor, keeping herself compact and not easily sighted, as Peggy had hoped. Peggy doesn’t even watch her own hands, working on quick instinct as she unbuckles Agent Kelley’s seatbelt and gives a massive, two-legged kick to the back of her seat. Kelley’s head hits the steering wheel. Her foot stomps reflexively on the gas pedal as she struggles, sending them into the car ahead, an enormous all-terrain sort of thing that stops the tiny SHIELD sedan flat but thrusts Kelley toward the dash again.

Peggy wastes no time. She has Ella by one hand, their bags in the other, and they’re out of the car before any of the other drivers can do more than honk at the accident.

“Mama?” Ella is wide-eyed, breathlessly confused, as Peggy pulls her along. Peggy nearly wants to shut her own eyes, knowing that they’re crossing a boundary in her daughter’s life that she’ll want to remember. Instead she keeps them open: better for Ella to have a life.

In the slightly dingy, thankfully empty bathroom of the shopping center, Peggy takes the mother-and-child stall. She levels her gaze at Ella. “Would you like to play a bit of dress-up, love?” She unzips one of the bags and pulls something out. She’d packed it just in case. She hadn’t trusted SHIELD completely after all.

Ella loves anything Tony makes for her. She recognizes this right away.

Five minutes later, cameras record a woman with cropped blond hair and a prominent mole on her cheek holding the hand of a young boy as they exit onto the sidewalk into the night. At the end of the evening, custodial staff still talking about the accident on the opposite road and the accompanying commotion will find a pair of suitcases in the trash can by the Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and a disassembled cell phone in the garbage by the Target.

* * *

Sometimes Steve wonders about Natasha. He’s seen her in action, seen the control of her lies, the ease with which she shifts, and his mind sometimes questions where the line is on her mask. Even watching her mourn Fury, there was a beat of a question that embarrassed him. Was any of it - the tears, the quietly whispered words - for show?

But he’s also seen Nat playing Here Comes the Airplane with his baby daughter. She’s come over to his home for movie night or game night with his family. Ella loves her. Peggy trusts her. And so when she drags him into an exam room and says, “Talk, Rogers,” he does.

“Insight's been in the works for years,” she says slowly when he's done. He can see her mind processing fast. “Fury’s the one who started the whole thing. Why would he turn against it now? And who could have realized that he’d changed his mind and would have wanted to stop him from stopping it?”

Steve holds up the flash drive. “Probably our best bet for answers. Fury gave it to Peggy before…”

Nat’s face presses open for a second. Then she curves her mouth up, purposeful. “Then let’s take that bet. But first -” She surveys his outfit, despite the events of the day still mostly pressed from his meeting with his professor. “Lost and found.”

She starts to move out of the room and he strides to catch up. “Why?” he asks with trepidation.

“Disguises. We have to get you a little uglier, less noticeable. Don’t worry, I took a class.” She glances over at him as they lean against the door and enter the stairwell. “Any chance we can downgrade the shoulders?”

“Sorry, they came with the package.”

She sighs. “I guess I can work with that.”

Steve might have decided to trust Natasha with his life, the lives of his family, potentially the fate of the world. He’s not sure he trusts her as his wardrobe coordinator.

* * *

Two hours later, Steve shifts in the driver’s seat of the truck they’ve borrowed without permission, grateful that Nat let him keep his jeans. The trucker hat she forced on him, and the heavy, ugly necklace she’d made him put on (“It’ll act as a distraction. It draws the eye, and people will be looking at it so much that they’ll remember it instead of your face”) have been discarded, but he is still wearing a long-sleeved navy shirt with “34th Annual Maryland Dermatologists Association Summer Picnic” written across it in enormous red letters. He’s worn worse than that ensemble, but not in a while.

The clock is about to change to the hour. Steve considers turning on the radio to hear a news update, unsure of what he’d want it to say. He hasn’t been able to call Peggy. He knew that trying to contact her would be ill-advised even before they saw the STRIKE team tracking them, before Natasha had told him about the Winter Soldier. Now that he suspects that he and Peggy made the wrong choice, that they shouldn’t have trusted SHIELD, and that the mistake has led the two most important people in the world to him to be either in the hands of or on the run from powerful enemies, he knows that trying to contact them would be futile or worse. He could put them in more danger whatever he chooses.

“It’s not going to say anything that you want to hear,” Nat says gently. It wouldn’t take a master spy to notice his gaze.

“I know.” Steve adjusts his grip on the steering wheel, tightening. He stares out the windshield.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Nat looking at him intently. “Do you trust Peggy?”

“Yes.” He answers before she’s even finished the question. He trusts Peggy as gravity.

Nat turns her eyes out the front. She nods seriously. “Then trust her. Even if you’re scared.”

He knows that she’s right, that this is the only way to get through, to get home, to get them all home. But fear and trust are in a mortal battle at the moment, and he isn’t sure which will win. He tries to forget that he trusted his mother, that he trusted Bucky, and it didn’t matter.

“Feet off the dash,” he tells Natasha to distract himself. “We said pristine condition, remember?”

She obeys with a sly, fond eyeroll. He readjusts his posture again and presses down on the gas. D.C. is far in their rearview, and they’re still fifty miles from Camp Lehigh.

* * *

He doesn’t punch Zola, the awful copy of that’s somehow both mangled and exactly how Steve remembers the man, until the screen flashes through the recent days of Steve’s life. His eyes are trained to recognize the shape of certain words, and just before Natasha alerts him to the missile, he moves to shatter the glass, entirely frantic instinct, because, after the headlines ( _The Hero Who Sacrificed Everything_ ) there they are.

They have Peggy as Margaret Elizabeth Carter; the screen displays, so briefly he could miss it, her SSR agent’s file. They included Ella’s full last name and it makes his breath catch, but it’s the photo above the caption, taken in the backyard of their house, that makes Steve’s fist fly out.

He remembers all over again the meticulous underground records when he first found their prison, the precise, detached way the scientists spoke of them, recording exactly how much they ate, how many minutes of exercise they were given and what kinds of supplements, but never mentioning their names. In a way, Zola was right. Finding them, the years they’ve spent putting each other back together, slip futilely from him if they are just subjects again, means to an end.

The shockwave from the missile is muffled not only from the shield and the little protection of the grate and the concrete floor. It isn’t the terror either, really. He just can’t think of the noise and the flames, the collapse, when his mind and heart and guts weigh so human inside him.

* * *

His back aches as he gets Natasha out. She isn’t very heavy, but his shoulders hurt, and when he hears a voice say, “Rogers!” he can’t be sure that he has the strength in him to fight whoever is speaking.

But it is Rhodey who comes over to brace Steve, awkward and a little painful because he is in the War Machine armor, his face visible but the metal still unyielding against Steve’s side.

“Let me take her,” he says, just as Steve asks, “What are you doing here?”

“Tony called and told me that something was up. I’ve been keeping an eye on air traffic along the eastern seaboard all day.” He gestures ahead, over toward their boosted car, which has remained thankfully and miraculously unscathed. “When I saw something that didn’t belong, we came to take a look, lend a hand.”

Steve glances at him. He knows that there’s some latitude to Rhodes’s position, but not enough for this to be something that will be brushed off. He goes to say something, but Rhodey shakes his head.

As Steve reaches the vehicle, he spots Sam, standing with feet planted. Though they’re retracted, Steve sees that he’s wearing the replacement wings Tony made him after he’d found out that the originals were being held at Fort Mead. “Thought you could use some air support,” Sam says, giving Steve a smile that isn’t about joy, just support and understanding. He opens the back door for Steve to rest Nat inside.

Steve boosts Nat onto the seat. Her head rocks a little, but even as she stirs a bit from unconsciousness, she stays quiet in a way that makes Steve sad. “Seems like you guys had a bit of a day,” he says.

“I wouldn’t trade it for yours,” Rhodes says seriously. Steve closes the door gently on Natasha before he turns back to them.

“Do you know anything?”

“SHIELD’s been trying to keep it quiet,” Sam says. “But they can’t shut down the entire internet.” He shows Steve a shaky cell phone video, cued up so they watch barely a glimpse of two teenagers mugging for the camera before there’s a crash and the angle switches, alarmed, to a small car crushing itself against a larger one, a woman and child running seconds later from the backseat into a nearby crowd.

“As far as we can tell, no one’s been able to find them,” Rhodey says as Sam returns his phone to his pocket.

Steve tries to gather his feelings, the worry and the anger fraying and tearing inside of him, tries to tuck it away behind a deep breath, a long blink. It doesn’t work. Sam put a hand on his shoulder.

“This is -”

“The best we can hope for,” Steve finishes. “I know.” He concentrates on the metal of the shield on his arm. “Thank you,” he says. “When we find Peggy, I know she’ll say the same.”

“Nah,” Sam tells him quietly. “Carter’ll probably tell us that it was the least we could do for queen and country, spit spot.”

Steve had forgotten, until now, how much Peggy likes Sam.

Rhodey looks at the sky, checks his watch. “We’d better get going.” He nods toward the back. “Get a little rest. We’ll drive.”

The idea of sleeping is absurd, but Steve nevertheless goes around the car and slides in next to Natasha. “What do we do when we get back to D.C.?” he asks when Sam has gotten into the driver’s seat.

“We find Jasper Sitwell,” Nat says. They all shift toward her, sidearm sudden. She looks a little groggy and certainly disheveled, but her eyes are open and clear, her voice steady. Only a study of the loose fist in her lap makes Steve realize how much Zola’s revelations have shaken her. “I want to ask why I had to help pull him off a ship three days ago.”

* * *

On the highway, they listen to Sitwell disparaging their plan while Rhodey complains mildly that his only role in the plan so far has been as the driver.

“What, you think people aren’t going to notice a dude in a metal suit flying around the streets of DC?” Sam finally says.

“Like the wings are so subtle?” Nat asks, raising an unimpressed eyebrow.

“Can we focus, please?” Sitwell snaps. “Using my DNA is a -”

Glass shatters over his words. Steve yanks himself around in time to watch Sitwell being pulled, screaming, out the window, but up in the passenger seat there isn’t much he can do. It happens fast, but Rhodes has good instincts. Thankfully, so does Natasha. The few bullets that got into the car miss as she anticipates the trajectories and covers them. As soon as she’s moved slightly aside, Steve looks out the windshield at the black-suited assassin skidding along the highway, thrown from the force of Rhodey’s braking.

Peggy’s description, Natasha’s name: they fit. Steve sets his shoulders, tries not to let uncertainty into his eyes.

The Winter Soldier stands, and Steve readies himself for the fight.

* * *

There are more combatants than anticipated, but the soldier knows how to adapt. The wound in his shoulder hinders him, his opponents’ unexpected weaponry and armor complicates everything, the publicity of it all is unfamiliar, but the soldier perseveres.

They built him strong, the soldier knows, built him to do a job. They tell him that he exists to straighten history, but he knows that his purpose is action, and he’s proven to be up to the task, to be able to withstand whatever history has attempted to throw at him.

But they’ve all forgotten: they built him around a human core, and humans do not remain unharmed when a Stark Industries grenade explodes beside them.

He feels the heat of it, the air against his now-bare face as he flies backward, and then nothing.

* * *

It’s their second instance of grand theft auto in as many days, and this time isn’t any better for simply walking over to an abandoned van and turning the key in the ignition.

In the open back, Steve stares down at the face of his best friend, devastatingly familiar despite being mourned in two centuries. Up front, he can hear Sam saying, “Plenty of people saw the patriotic frisbee back there,” the grim-jawed bite to his voice the only hint that he has the pedal on the floor as he steers them away from stunned bystanders, two SHIELD cars in pursuit.

“Now that it’s obvious that it’s Steve, the STRIKE team will have a harder time pulling off an assassination,” Nat agrees. “They’ll want to corner us somewhere private to finish it.”

The radio clicked on as soon as they turned on the engine, caught between stations as if the driver had been changing before noticing the disturbance in the rearview. Their words are overlaid by classical violins twining with something fast and Latin American, broken liberally by static. “We’re not exposing civilians just to try to keep clear of the people chasing us,” Steve says, his voice quiet despite the noise. His hands don’t seem to know what to do. He keeps reaching for his cell phone, automatically looking to talk to Peggy, wishing they were back in a time when the only person you’d have to be worried about listening to your calls was your nosy neighbor. He runs a thumb over the compass in his pocket instead. “Sam, take us away from the main roads. I’ll fight them there.”

Sam looks at him in the mirror. “You sure, man? Things didn’t go great back there, and we still have some helicarriers to take care of.”

“I don’t think they were eager to face us on their own. They were relying on Buck to do most of work for them,” Steve says. “And they don’t have him anymore.” Sam nods, makes a turn to take them down a side street. One of the SHIELD cars disappears from view, which seems half blessing, half worry.

Rhodey rubs his mouth, looking down at Bucky too. “I’m sorry,” he says, just to Steve. “I didn’t realize it was him until it was too late.”

Steve glances up. “You know him?”

“Everybody who know you,” says Rhodey, meeting Steve’s eye, “knows him.”

Steve sits with that idea for the second that he can afford, then another. He nods. “It’s okay. None of us even thought...” He knows what it would have taken to turn Bucky, can only imagine what would keep him this young, this unchanged, after so much time. The thought of what Bucky must have gone through for all those decades, while Steve slept, while he found Peggy, found Ella, while they built their life, while Steve never even _looked_ , makes him sick.

The next second, a sudden grinding sound behind them has Steve craning toward the back window just as Sam says, “The hell?”

The STRIKE SUV behind them has stopped and someone has stepped out. Sam seems tempted to go even faster, take the unexpected stroke of luck and get them out, but Rhodey, in the back with a better view, says, “Hold!”

Maria Hill taps politely on the back door of the van, a black SHIELD helmet dangling from her fingers as she tucks a pistol with a silencer back into her belt. “The other guys went to cut you off the other way, so we’ll have to be quick getting out of here. And I’ll ride with you, if that’s okay.” She glances over her shoulder. “Things got pretty dead in there.”

They’re quiet for seconds they cannot afford, trying to figure out who to trust. Hill lets them have the time, standing patiently and not reminding them that they know her, that they can believe her, that she’s just taken out several SHIELD employees to prove it.

What makes the decision is this: Hill spots Bucky, still unconscious and slack on the floor, and her eyebrow twitches up. Steve’s played poker with Hill and he’ll never do it again, at least not for money. That eyebrow is the most he’s ever seen from her. And in that moment he believes that she didn’t know about at least this, and for now, that’s the only assurance he’s going to get. He moves aside and lets her climb in.

“Good,” she says briskly, moving in a half crouch toward the front seat. “Wilson, I’ll tell you where to go.”

* * *

Perhaps, Steve thinks as he looks at Fury, he should have done this years ago. Perhaps the moment he and Peggy began to debate how much they trusted their child with SHIELD, as they made deals and bargains because of their concerns, they should have worked so that no parents should have to live with that worry...or live without realizing they needed to worry, until it was too late.

But Steve Rogers has never pretended to be God, never pretended to be infallible. He has a family. He put their needs first. And so it’s taken until now to decide to burn SHIELD to the ground, to destroy its hidden, rotten core.

He steps away from Fury. He’d been prepared to argue, but Nick says nothing. Steve likes to believe it’s because he agrees, because he’s finally realized that he’s not infallible either, although he suspects that the amount of energy one has after recent brush with death might have something to do with it as well.

They’ve sedated Bucky and locked him in another room in the facility. Steve glances both ways as he gets to the hall; he can’t quite remember which way to go.

Natasha, exiting behind him and taking his arm, solves the issue for him. “While you’re coming up with the big, heroic plan, let’s take a side trip. There’s something I think you need to see.”

* * *

He keeps his hood up as they walk down a busy street. Beside him, Natasha rolls her eyes. “I’m retiring you from stealth work after this,” she tells him, turning into a narrow alley.

“No argument from me,” says Steve.

The alley leads them to the kitchen door of a traditional Irish pub.

“Well, what a day it is for me,” roars a tiny bald man behind the bar, looking back at them over his shoulder. “Guinness in my cup, the Wanderers up one-nil, and my favorite visitor dropping by!”

“You focus on your game, Tommy,” Nat responds cheerfully, one foot already on the stairs leading up. Steve hopes his glance at her isn’t too obvious; she’s developed a sudden, agreeably subtle Irishness to her words. “My friend and I are only here for a moment, and then we have to get to work.”

“You work too hard, but suit yourself, I suppose,” says Tommy, and waves a hand before turning back to the television.

Steve follows Natasha up to the second floor. “This place is your local?” he asks.

“In a manner of speaking,” she says. She steps onto the landing and turns toward the door there, rapping in a quick, clear pattern before inserting a key.

Reflecting later, Steve will wonder why he didn’t expect this and what exactly he had been thinking they were there for. But now, as Natasha opens the door to reveal Peggy sitting at a small kitchen table, her pistol in front of her and Ella’s sleeping breaths behind, he can’t think at all. His relief washes through him so completely he loses track of his body. By the time he becomes aware of his arms again, they’re already wrapped around Peggy.

* * *

“Natasha pointed this place out to me once. We passed it on the street and she just happened to mention that they have apartments up here. I have the feeling that this isn’t the only one she has, even here in Washington.”

They are sitting across from each other at the table, gripping hands as they catch their breath and pretend to be calm. Natasha peers out the back window, politely acting as if she can’t hear them.

Peggy sizes him up, eyes sharp. There’s a difference, Steve finds, between people thinking they can anticipate him because he seems plain and open, a man from a simpler era, and Peggy’s easy understanding of him from their time together, from trust and sharing.

“It seems that you’ve had a more eventful day than I have, though.”

He knows her well enough to track the subtle expressions across her face as he summarizes what she’s missed. In some ways, watching her emotions, the horror and sadness and anger, is validating. It grounds his own feelings. It brings him back to familiar territory: he and Peggy share so much that being cut off from her feedback and opinions has felt alien.

As he gets to Bucky, she closes her eyes. When she opens them, he can still see the tears. She glances back at Ella, still deep in a sweaty, afternoon sort of sleep. “The fountain of artificial youth seems overly popular,” she says. She presses her fingertips to her eyes, then places her hands back on the table in front of her. “I can’t imagine what he’s gone through for all this time, but I don’t know that we can focus on it right now.”

Steve nods slowly, even though he wants to shake his head. The anger is worn and so tired inside of him. “We still have the helicarriers to worry about, and only the beginnings of a plan.”

“Let me guess: it’s exceedingly dangerous, relies on chance, and has quite a few factors that could go drastically wrong?” Despite her sardonic tone, her eyes are fond on him. She squeezes his hand. “Lucky thing you came to me for help.”

“Sorry, but I might have something else to factor in,” says Nat, coming over with one of the secure phones Hill gave them. She passes it over, and Peggy and Steve lean in to look at it together.

 _Barnes escaped_ , reads the message. _Has a gun. In the woods, not sure where_.

“Yes,” Peggy says with a crisp nod, a controlled breath. “This does change things. But I think I can work with this.” She sets her jaw. “Especially because I want to face Alexander Pierce, and make him face what he tried to do to me.”

“If you’re going and I’m going, we’re going to need a number for a babysitter,” Steve points out, feigning lightness. He can’t think of exactly what Pierce might have been trying to do, can’t spend time focusing on whether it was about HYDRA disposing of witnesses or experimenting on his family. Ella makes a small sound behind him, rubs the back of her hand across her eyes, not yet waking but beginning to. Regardless of the stress, her afternoon naps are relatively short these days. “And considering how dangerous this could be, it could be a long-term situation.”

Peggy says, “I’m not planning on dying today, Steve. Are you?”

“No one plans on it, Peg.” Steve shakes his head. His responsibilities stretch and tangle.

“I’ll stay with her,” Natasha says. “Until you get back.”

Steve looks at Nat, looks at Peggy. He’s a parent now, and part of that is staying safe, staying in his daughter’s life. But he wants to give his daughter a hopeful world, too. He scrapes a hand against his eyes. “Okay. Let’s hear what we’re doing next.”

* * *

As Peggy pieces together something more suitable for combat, Steve grabs Natasha’s arm.

“Did you know they were here the whole time?”

She shakes her head. “Not until I heard they escaped. And even then it was just a guess.” She looks at him straight on, seeming unconcerned by the easily bruising grip of his fingers. “But I trust Peggy too.”

He stares at her for a long moment and then nods. “Don’t do that again,” he says.

“Hopefully,” she tells him, “after today I won’t have to.”

* * *

They wake Ella before they go, gentle hands on her shoulder, soft voices in her ear. They pretend it’s like when she’s been up late the night before and has to be dragged out of bed for school instead of naturally bouncing up at some absurd hour.

“Auntie Nat is going to stay with you,” Peggy tells her, her voice so easy.

“We’ll be back soon,” Steve says, and hopes that his words, possibly the last he’ll say to his daughter, aren’t a lie.

Natasha, now in Peggy’s place at the kitchen table, shuffles a deck of cards between her hands. “You might have beaten me last time, kid, but I’m ready for a Go Fish rematch.”

Ella grins, barely awoken and still competitive. Steve holds the image in his mind as they walk out the door. He doesn’t need to look at Peggy to know that she is doing the same.

* * *

“Barnes is a wildcard,” Peggy had said. “I don’t know that anyone can predict what he’ll do, but I know who has the closest chance.”

So as she goes off to face Pierce armed with little more than another of Tony’s facial disguise matrices and her - admittedly formidable - wits, as Sam and Rhodey and Hill head for the helicarriers, Steve goes into the woods.

He’s never been entirely comfortable in nature. Without the city noises, everything he does seems magnified, mistakes easier to make and catch. He tries to walk silent-footed, his shield raised and ready, but he knows that it might not matter. There had been a total lack of recognition in Bucky’s eyes on the highway, and the thought that even Steve might not be able to break through it is oppressive as he moves deeper, blindly, into the forest.

* * *

The soldier knows how to find a vantage point, to give himself the best odds. The height of the tree is an advantage, and the bright colors and shimmering metal are a beacon, no matter how softly this tall man tries to creep.

An image flashes across his eyes: a smaller man, same soft walk, an easy smile and an absent brush of that same blond hair. His head flinches to the side, but he returns to focus quickly, tensing his fingers around the cool metal of his rifle, trying to ignore the way that gives him another flash of the familiar. He has surely been in this position before, lying in quiet, gun in hand. Although he can’t conjure a full, specific memory, he knows that something like this has to have happened. His mind must have called that up. Nevermind that such recall has never happened before.

Not that he can remember.

He shakes himself. It can’t matter, not when the the man has squared himself so perfectly into range.

* * *

People can hear bullets. Not just the explosion of the gun, but the bullet itself, pushing through air and sound.

Steve can hear bullets louder, and sooner. It’s lucky. It saves him.

He spins as it comes toward him, deflecting it easily with the shield. He glances around, trying to figure out where it came from, wondering if it might be easier had he taken physics back in 1935.

It doesn’t matter. Another bullet a second later, and as soon as his shield comes up again, someone lands on top of him.

He uses the shield for leverage and pushes Bucky off, trying to find the frame of battle. But it’s difficult, adjusting to fighting against someone he only wants to help.

* * *

“If you do this, none of your past is gonna remain hidden,” Pierce says. Peggy hates a man who thinks himself so superior he can threaten calmly. “We have files on you there, on your daughter. Are you sure that you want those out there for anyone to read?”

Peggy continues typing. “For the greater good,” she lies, facing the screen. She hadn’t realized she would hate Pierce so much until she saw his face. Now she wants him to watch, thinking that he is witnessing the bonfire of the miserable work of his life.

Certain files, key, damning files, are uploaded to the open internet. Most are loaded onto a private server. Natasha showed her how, doubt and a yearning touch of penance on her face. It’s easier than Peggy had thought it would be; everything is neatly labeled.

 _The Nazis were always so organized_ , Peggy thinks sickly, and allows herself one moment to close her eyes, one moment to think of the others disarming the helicarriers, of Steve fighting for lives on the ground, before she returns to her mission.

* * *

The other man is fast, strong, but the soldier can feel his heart isn’t in it. The thought makes him flinch again and hit harder. He might notice that the man seems to defend instead of attack, pull punches that should land bruisingly, but heart can have nothing to do with any of this.

“Never thought we’d end up here, Buck,” says the man, his voice half calm in a way that means he’s not calm at all. “What are two Brooklyn boys doing fighting each other in the middle of the woods?”

The soldier says nothing, just whips his knife to avoid the shield, slashing the man’s arm. The sleeve of his foolishly civilian shirt splits and a line of blood appears.

“You were always fast. Used to be able to grab a roll from your mother’s kitchen without her noticing, and she had the sharpest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

“Shut up,” the soldier grunts now, blows coming harder because he can’t let that sound as familiar as it does.

“Not that you didn’t get caught, too. Jumping the turnstiles to go watch a game. Slipping away a couple of chestnuts from the cart in the park.” The man laughs, free and a little breathless, absolutely infuriating. “You remember when we got chased halfway across town by Mr. Cibotti for taking a piece of taffy from his corner store on a dare? And when your mother found out, there wasn’t anyplace safe for us.” He puts on a soft-voiced imitation, as if there were someone nearby to be bothered by his shouting. “James Buchanan Barnes, don’t you think you can hide!” His laugh ends abruptly, not because of any of the soldier’s continued attacks, but because he tries to pause, to catch the soldier’s eye. “That’s who you are, you know. That’s your name. James Buchanan Barnes. You’re my best friend, and I’m more sorry for what’s happened to you than you can know. I’m not going to let it happen again. I’m not going to give up on you. I’m going to fight for you. But I’m not going to fight you anymore.”

He stands straight. The soldier watches, calculating. And the man drops his shield, and kicks it away.

The soldier knows his brain lacks the memories it should have. He knows that his muscles remember more than his mind. But even he knows the impossibility of this.

He swings forward, testing. The man dodges, but doesn’t reclaim the shield. The soldier swings a punch with his metal arm, doesn’t check it. It hits the side of the man’s chest with a meaty crack.

“You should fight back,” he says flatly, though he knows advice to the enemy is no strategy at all. He moves faster.

“I told you. I’m not fighting you anymore.” The man is starting to sound winded. He’s bleeding now not only from his arm, but from a cut above his eye too, a sluggish red slipping down his face. There’s surely blood bursting tenderly beneath the skin too, and the thought of familiar, defiant black eyes bursts suddenly through the soldier’s memory.

“Fight back!” He shoves forward again, knife flashing, limbs pressing, able and fast. But even so, even as his hits land, it feels somehow like he’s being toyed with, the refusal to truly engage, to take part in fulfilling the programming, the mission he was set on. And then, as something explodes, above them and far away, the man rushes him, gripping the soldier’s chest, tightening as he pushes him down.

“I never wanted this to happen, Buck,” and he sounds so sad that the soldier roars and turns him over, pressing him into the ground, crushing his chest with his metal arm.

The man says, “Don’t do this, Bucky,” like he’s pitying him, as if the soldier isn’t in control.

“Shut up!” The soldier bends his arm, angling up, his hand gripping the man’s windpipe too, bodyweight shoving mercilessly.

“Bucky, I’ve got a little girl.” The soldier recognizes the words, but the tone breaking the man’s voice is strange. Not fear, or begging. Grief. “I have a life with a woman I’d do anything in the world for, and I’ve got a little girl, and I want to get home to them, Buck. I want you to meet them, because they already know all about you.”

There’s a wheezing, pressured breath coming from him now. That is too familiar and it hurts. The soldier wants to close his eyes, wants something to stop: the brink of memories, the horrible sound of air being wrenched in and out of lungs, the feeling that if he doesn’t hear that sound anymore it will be the end of the world.

“I don’t want to kill you,” says the man, pushing the words out. The soldier's arm, built to last, built to kill, shakes at the thought that he will die gasping. “And I don’t want to die. And I can’t bring you to meet my family like this.” His frame trembles. His eyes are magnified, wide as the stars.

“Rogers.” The word comes out covered in grit, and the soldier can feel the relief, the weakness, below him, but the part that tells him to press the advantage is overwhelmed by the part that says, “Can’t believe you’ve got two girls and here I am without even the one.”

The metal arm comes up and then Bucky lifts himself off. Rogers makes about six different sounds at once: a gasp of air, a wet laugh-cry. He rolls over just enough and gags onto the ground, spitting mucus and blood into the dirt.

“Your aim’s gotten a hell of a lot better. I won’t even have to clean you up,” Bucky says.

“You’re a goddamn liar, Barnes,” says Steve, his voice hoarse, prideful Brooklyn street punk barely winning over relieved best friend. “Name one time you cleaned me up.” He gets to his knees. His body seems to groan as he rises.

“You’d think,” Bucky says, standing by his shoulder, “that you were the one who’d spent half a century getting his brain screwed around with, you can’t remember a thing like that.” His arm jumps a little. He presses his other hand to his ear. He looks over into even blue eyes. “Steve– Stevie. You gotta put me out. I’m gonna– I can’t–”

Steve’s eyes close, and in that off-guard second, the soldier feels a jab at his neck. His body is lowered to the ground, and Bucky hears Steve saying, “You’re alright, Buck. I’m right here. We’re gonna be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hung out being stuck on this chapter approximately forever because the idea of copying the script of Winter Soldier was unutterably boring and terrible to me and the idea of having to sit down and write through it made me want to scream unendingly for fifteen years. Hopefully I've managed to include enough of that narrative to make sense while still existing independently...idk, whatever, I hope it's fine.


	3. Chapter 3

Whatever was in Hill’s cocktail, Bucky doesn’t wake up for two days. His breathing changes sometime during the first morning, unconsciousness transitioning to pure exhaustion. He sleeps unaware in Steve and Peggy’s small guest bedroom. Steve sits watch more often than not, talking about his classes (he’s missed two so far, and could miss more; he doesn’t care), and what he’s thinking about cooking for dinner (Peggy’s voted for roast chicken, mostly because she likes the mashed potatoes he makes on the side, and Ella wants macaroni and cheese again), and how they’ve been called in for a parent-teacher conference (Ella is apparently very bossy on the playground).

“I’m thinking that we should get a dog,” he says sometime on the second afternoon.

“Think again, Rogers,” Peggy calls from the next room. Steve grins.

Ella walks in a minute later, up and down tiptoeing. She likes being a ballerina. “Mama says you can maybe get a turtle.” She plants her feet down with a tiny smack, squints at him, hands on hips: her imitation of Peggy. “ _Maybe_.”

Steve lifts her onto his lap, faking a groan as if she’s gotten too heavy when she’ll really always be the right size for him. “Hear that, Buck? I’m allowed to get a turtle.”

“Maybe,” Ella reminds him. She leans over and walks her fingers gently up Bucky’s arm. “When Uncle Bucky wakes up, will you let him give the turtle a name?”

Steve rests his hand lightly over hers so he’s anchored to his daughter and his best friend. “He can give the turtle whatever name he wants, Ella Bea.”

* * *

When Bucky finally wakes up, the first thing he sees is an arrangement of crayon and marker masterpieces mosaiced on the wall in front of him.

“We’ve tried to get her to stop using scotch tape,” Peggy says fondly from beside him. He turns his head to see her put a bookmark into her novel, looking at him from her chair, one leg tucked gracefully beneath herself. “But she seems to have inherited a double dose of stubbornness, and won’t be dissuaded from slowly stripping our walls of paint.”

“Lucky no landlord of any Brooklyn dump ever cared about that, or Steve would have been blacklisted from the neighborhood.” His voice is hoarse. He doesn’t clear his throat.

Peggy frowns. “He never mentioned that,” she says, mind clearly beginning to calculate revenge. After a second, she focuses on Bucky again. “How much do you remember?”

“Enough to be confused as hell.”

“Mmm. Understandable.” She puts her paperback on the bedside table, sits up straight, and begins to tell a story.

* * *

Steve’s never seen Ella act as shy as she does when she meets Bucky face to face for the first time. Her backpack is still on, weighing loose and half empty down nearly to her knees; she had just come back from school when Peggy called them upstairs.

“You can go over,” Steve offers softly, starting to move into the room himself. Ella follows, still shadowing herself a bit behind his legs. 

“Do I really look that bad?” Bucky asks, looking up from the newspaper. Steve doubts that even Ella is fooled into believing that he’s actually been reading it.

Steve puts a hand on his shoulder. “No worse than usual.” Bucky’s eyes are clear, and Peggy has placed a clean bandage over the nearly healed bullet wound in his shoulder; the tape peeks out from beneath the collar of his shirt. His hair is damp and mildly better kempt, but Steve still wonders if they can perhaps convince him to get a haircut, or at least some sort of grooming regimen to bring it to the better side of feral.

“You’re supposed to be nice to him, Daddy,” Ella says, her voice small but still insistent.

Bucky tilts a smile at her. “You’re right. He is supposed to be nice.”

“And Daddy said you are his best friend,” Ella adds, emboldened. “So he should be extra nice to you.”

“I think I need to have you around to help me all the time.” Bucky holds out a hand to her. “I’m Bucky, and I’m very glad to meet you.”

“My name is Ella, and I already know who you are.”

“I guess you must be the Ella who gave me all these nice decorations for my walls.” He gestures. Her name is signed brightly on each.

She beams. “Those are mine. I have one more, too.” She swings her backpack off, and pulls a rolled up picture out, this one displaying the more impressive selection of art supplies available at her school: it has stickers and little gems and, Steve notices with a wince, glitter.

“Why don’t you get the tape,” Steve suggests, “so we can add it to the wall.”

She leaves the picture on the bed as she runs out of the room. Steve smiles over his shoulder after her until Bucky grabs his arm, digging hard, and he turns back.

“You shouldn’t have done this, Steve.”

“Let her hang the pictures?”

“You shouldn’t have brought me here. You shouldn’t have even _told_ me about them.” Bucky drops his voice lower, as if they wouldn’t be able to hear Ella clattering her way back along the hall as a warning. “You already almost let yourself get killed pulling me out. What if I hadn’t come out of it? I’d have known to look, and I don’t know what I would have done.”

“But,” says Steve, “that was the point. I’ve known you your whole life. I trust you.” He puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “You once told me that you were with me ‘til the end of the line. I know you meant that. I mean it for you too.”

Bucky shoves him off, stands. “You don’t get to _put_ anyone on the line for me. I know there are things I don’t remember yet and maybe never will, but I’ll still have to live with the fact that I did them. You shouldn’t have put me in a place where I could do more damage, and maybe worse.”

Steve squares, even without meaning to. “I know you. I knew it would be safe.” The smile of the last few days drains from him. He walks over to the window and, moving aside the curtain, looks out onto the empty backyard. Someday, when he can stand the idea of Ella being outside alone again, he wants to build a swingset there. He turns back to face Bucky again, speaking softly. “Do you think I’d do something that would put Peggy or Ella in danger? For a start, do you think Peggy would ever let me?”

“I think you two are good people,” Bucky says, simple and exhausted. “And that can make you naive.”

“It’s not naive to trust a friend.”

“It could be.” Bucky looks at him directly. “If the friend is me.”

When Ella bounces back into the room, Steve is almost relieved. He doesn’t know how to convince Bucky of this, doesn’t have the words to express something that to him is bone-truth. He lets Bucky’s charming smile lie itself back onto his face as they admire Ella’s artwork, and hopes that something will change. But he isn’t surprised when he comes upstairs that night at dinnertime and finds the window slitted open and Bucky gone. He sits down heavily on the bed Bucky left neatly made; there are not even footprints across the bare yard to mark his presence.

* * *

The first time Bucky calls Peggy, it is the dead center of the night. She startles awake with the shrill of her phone and automatically looks toward Steve. He has been working harder at school, taking on more responsibilities with the Avengers than he has in years and adding on the cleanup of SHIELD, attempting to wear himself out in a way that his body works hard not to allow. Tonight, however, he has managed a restless but intense sleep, and Peggy, a feeling in her gut about just who might be calling so late, successfully removes herself from the bed and slides away.

She blinks and squints in the overbright porcelain light of the bathroom, adjusting her eyes as she answers the phone. “Hello?”

“I think I recognize a lot of things,” Bucky says, sounding a little flat but otherwise perfectly himself. “Like I’ve been in the city before. That makes sense, doesn’t it? If you were looking to change history, there are plenty of people here that would do the job.” A bare angle of a laugh. “Or maybe just me, I guess, doing the job.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call several decades of kidnapping and torture a job,” says Peggy, trying for a calm that’s very hard to find around the anger. She sits down on the rim on the bathtub.

Dryly, “That doesn’t leave me with a lot on my résumé, then.”

She thinks about just putting her foot down and telling him to just come home, that they can find something for him, or he can do nothing, that they’ll help him, that he needs to be with them instead of out alone. But she slides around to lean against the wall, tucks her knees up to her chest and rests her cheek against them, and knows that the best thing she can give him is time and hope and her voice at the end of the line.

“If you’re looking for résumé help,” she says, “try the library.”

He is quiet for a very long time, and the sniping absence even of audible breathing is a painful, cutting thought. “Lot of information in a place like that,” he finally says. “I’m worried about what I might find.”

Peggy takes her own silence. She tries to remember the ways that Bucky needs the same things she did and sometimes still does, and the ways he is different. She selects her words carefully, beginning to feel a bit fragile. The conversation is touching on memories that she has thought through so much that she has moved away from them, thinking she was past it all, that they couldn’t hurt her anymore. “If you find anything that makes you worry,” she says, “perhaps try to remember that the things which are done to us or through us are not who we are. Look to your own choices instead.”

“Is that what you do?”

Though he says it almost idly, curious and a little desperate for himself, it hits with an unexpected sharpness. Because the answer is yes - she’s a mother because she chose to be a mother, she’s chosen to live fully in a time where she never expected to find herself - but these days her life typically feels so seamless that she rarely has to consciously reenter those choices. A vague nausea threads into her and she says, as gently as she can, “I have to go.” She’s chipping just a little right now, and needs a bit of time. She won’t be able to help him later if she’s broken herself.

“Yeah.” She wonders where exactly he is in the city, if he’s warm enough, if there’s anyone nearby to notice him. “Don’t tell him I called.”

“I won’t tell him what we discussed,” she says slowly. “But I won’t keep it a secret that I know that you’re alive.”

“Don’t let him find me.”

“I’ll do my best, but if you’ll recall, he lets very little stand in his way.”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you, Carter,” he says, and hangs up.

She touches her phone to her forehead for a moment. It’s likely useless to try to get the call traced: Barnes is smart, and even if he has an imperfect grasp on technology, he’ll probably know to call from a stolen cell phone or one of the few phone boxes left. And, regardless, their espionage options have become somewhat limited in the past few days.

Her mind automatically fills in various options and plans, but she knows that any of them will make things worse. Finally, she forces herself to stand. When she returns to bed, her place under the blanket is warm, not from her own body but from Steve’s radiant heat. She considers waking him, but his face has finally smoothed a bit, and so instead she just takes his hand beneath the cover and for now tries to find her own way back to sleep.

* * *

“Is there any chance,” says Tony, leaning over the camera so the screen fills with a close-up of his T-shirt, “that we can pass off the idea that Fury has a brother? I mean, what does anyone really know about the guy?” It’s hard to tell exactly what he’s working on, but as he pulls back again they can see the screwdriver he’s grabbed.

“The eye thing’s not exactly subtle,” Natasha points out dryly.

Clint leans over her to dip another handful of chips into the guacamole that Steve had set out on the coffee table. “I don’t know,” he says around a mouthful. “I’ve met a lot of government higher-ups – give him a good business card that says he’s Dick Fury and it could work.”

Peggy doesn’t disagree, but she says, “It seems to me that even if we could have Fury step in, even if we could convince him to come back again, SHIELD itself is quite…”

“Destroyed?” Steve looks up at her from his clenched, resting hands.

“Both literally and figuratively.”

Rhodey’s voice says from somewhere behind Tony, “They have a regular ‘Here’s what we fished out of the Potomac today’ segment on late night now.”

Tony half turns toward him. “When did you have time to watch– Wait, was that the ‘important work’ you had to catch up on when I asked you to come for dinner last night?”

“First, let’s make it clear that you wanted me to come over to help you weld a lifesize working model of R2D2 and you only even offered food because Pepper said you had to. And second, after saving the world again, maybe a guy just wants his bed and some Chinese takeout.”

Tony, fully turned away from the camera now: “We could have done both, old man, I’m just sayin–”

“Focus please, Anthony,” Peggy says. “We still have to decide what to do with the lot of you now that your overseeing agency, such as it was, is gone.”

“We’ve already been here for an hour, and our only ideas have been to have Fury’s fake brother establish SHIELD 2, or to give us each a sheriff's hat and a badge to authorize us for rogue avenging.” Nat leans over, hands loosely between her knees.

“I stand by that,” says Clint, picking chip crumbs from the bottom of the bowl. “It would be a cool look for us.”

“I’m not arguing,” says Tony. “It might not be the aesthetic I had in mind, but I can pull it off. And either way, I’ll take one for the team to see Cowboy Cap.”

“The structure of SHIELD was helpful though,” Rhodey interrupts, finally tilting the camera so he is in frame too. “They had on-ground assets, a network of thousands of agents, international intelligence and diplomatic connections...I mean, put aside resources to chase down the bad guys hiding from you, how are people even going to be able to call if they’re actually looking for help? Are you giving out your cell phone numbers now? Should they just get a big flashlight to shine into the sky?” He seems to look mostly at Steve as he says, “Look, we all agree that SHIELD needed to come down. I don’t regret doing it. But the options now are a little limited.”

“What about Hill?” says Peggy. “She has significant expertise, and she’s less tainted by anything touching Fury. Not to mention everyone agrees that she’s alive.”

“No!” Tony says. “She’s mine now, and replacement SHIELD can’t have her.”

“Don’t think of it as a replacement, buddy,” Clint says. “We can still be a family like we always were. It’s just...something new we’re trying.” He reaches for the Starbucks cup he’s been nursing since he arrived. (Steve hadn’t even known they made them so big. For a minute it had seemed that a giant cup was walking in behind Natasha.)

“We’re going to have to keep thinking about exactly what to try,” says Steve, pushing himself up with hands on his knees. “But later. It’s pickup time.”

“What Rogers, are you afraid that if Ella sees us, she’s going to want a big Avengers slumber party?” Nat gives a slim lipstick grin.

“No,” Steve says, starting to collect the bowls. “I just don’t want to have to explain why all of my friends have time to hang around eating snacks in the middle of the day. She’s going to start thinking that you’re all cool, and I don’t want to mislead my kid.”

“Who’s over watching her today anyway, if we’re all here?” Clint asks. Steve and Peggy catch eyes. They know that getting Ella back into a routine without anxiety is important so they’ve been sending her to school, yet they can’t quite settle themselves. They vetted the school before they enrolled Ella, but just days ago they trusted people vetted by the entire world, and it could have gotten her killed. They’ve even bought a car now, as public transportation feels targeted and terrifying, and since Ella went back, someone - Steve or Peggy or one of their friends - has sat outside the school, keeping an eye on things. All quiet, but no chances.

“We asked Sharon to step in for the day.” Peggy tells them. She pulls out her phone to text her niece.

“Well, I for one can tell when I’m not wanted,” Tony says, looking up from his work with a fake huff. “Send me a paper airplane message next time we’re gonna have a big meeting in the clubhouse.”

“Yeah, your password can be ‘asshole,’” Rhodey says. “We’ll talk to you all later,” and he shuts off the camera so Steve and Peggy’s TV blinks dark before falling into static.

Clint and Natasha head out too, and Steve and Peggy go together to get Ella from school. Peggy can see that Steve is thinking. All through the ride there and back, through their slightly tense, sharp-eyed trip to the library, through preparing and eating and cleaning up from dinner, through Ella’s bath and story reading and her millionth question about where Bucky has gone and when he will be back (though it’s been nearly two weeks now), he is thinking, but he says nothing.

Finally, when they’re sitting side by side on their bed, mountainous baskets of laundry around them, over a week’s worth of clean clothing overdue for folding, he speaks.

“You could do it.”

Peggy looks up from the pair of slacks she’s holding, trying to decide whether they truly need ironing. “What?”

“The new SHIELD thing. All the things that would be part of that job - organizing a global workforce, working with governmental organizations, keeping in touch with us, keeping on top of us - you’re already doing those things, and you’re amazing at them.” He folds one of Ella’s swimsuits and sets it aside. She keeps glancing at it. It’s winter; when was the last time they went to the pool? “Hey.” Steve catches her hand, and she turns toward him instead. “I can’t think of a better person for the job. If you wanted it.”

“I already have a job,” she points out. 

“I know.”

“A job I enjoy, and that I’m quite skilled at.”

“I know.”

She turns away, fold a couple of Steve’s T-shirts and hands them to him. “I’ll consider it.”

That night, she wakes from a bare sleep, gasping sharply. She turns over and shoves at Steve’s shoulder until he startles awake too.

“Unless I miss my guess,” she says, voice soft in the darkness, “had I been there, I likely would have been right beside Howard, building up SHIELD. If I had been, would I have allowed Zola to get his foot in the door, to taint everything it stood for?”

“Of course not.”

She shakes her head. “You say that now, in the twenty-first century, where it’s a rare person who admits to being off-put that I am who I am and I do what I do. But back then, if someone had said that I could have so much power but no more, that I was allowed to do good, to do _anything_ , only if I harbored this one evil, I wonder if I might have done it.”

Steve stays quiet for one blink. “We’ve read the same history books, Peggy. Don’t you think I’ve wondered what I would have done if I hadn’t gone into the ice? Korea started barely five years later. I would have been young enough, maybe even still enlisted. Or what if they’d found me in the sixties, the seventies? If they had said that they were sending me over there, would I have told them that fighting Nazis was one thing, but meddling in half of Asia with wars that were barely successful, by any measure, was another? Or maybe I would have agreed: yes, sir, Mr. Secretary, we need to do everything to stop Communism. Yes, sir, Mr. President, too many have already died, and if I can stop things any sooner, than it will be worth it.” He breathes, his voice even softer now. “We can’t know, Peggy. We can’t know who we might have been. But I know who you were then, and I know who you are now, and I know neither of those women would have stood for it.”

A part of her is still angry at Steve for just how far he trusted Bucky, just how far he stretched his promise to come back to her. But that’s the thing about Steve’s faith: it feels iron and unshakeable, and she wants to believe it despite everything. 

In the morning, as they move around each other in the kitchen, making breakfast and packing lunches, Peggy leans over as she passes and whispers to Steve, “I have conditions.”

And Steve, looking somehow young and whole and bright, the early sun the perfect light for him, grins and whispers back, “Of course you do.”

* * *

The second time Bucky calls, Peggy is at work. She’s had a good morning. She finalized a partnership with an organization that does work with long-term healthcare in underserved areas. She started to talk with Sonia about her shift to take on more responsibilities as an administrator rather than an administrative assistant for the Maria Stark Foundation. She had a brief but finally successful call with the CIA director to clarify that if he is ever interested in working with the Avengers, he’ll need to speak with her first, and that if, in the future, he ever tries to approach any of them privately for off-book missions the way he tried to do with Clint last week, he won’t even be speaking with her again.

There’s a chance, when she looks at the phone, that the unidentified number is the CIA director again, or one of the other agent types now starting to speckle her life, but she knows who it actually is before she picks up.

“They have my enlistment papers here at the museum, under glass. _Gift of Rebecca Barnes Proctor_. Also a couple of my comic books and my Jigger Statz baseball card. Which I guess means that Becca got tired of keeping my junk around after a while.”

“The curator told Steve,” Peggy says calmly, “that your sister kept those things until just before her death. Many of your belongings are still with your nieces and nephew, but they gave some to Steve when he first met with them. Your letters, all of the ones you wrote home, are in a lockbox in our house.”

Though silent, the line is still open, so Peggy sits and waits. Finally he says, “I remember signing the papers. I signed them, I signed up, and maybe I signed up for this too.”

Peggy brushes a hand over her eyes. She remembers this, the automatic search for reason, for the things you might have done, must have done, to make what happened to you understandable, as if any mistake you might have made could possibly have been an excuse. It was not a line she ever followed for long, but she remembers those desperate minutes, her mind looking for the logic of any of it.

She says, gently, “Our mutual idiot signed up for his procedure. You signed up to be a soldier. This isn’t something that you could have anticipated, nor should you have had to. There’s nothing you could have done differently.”

“I could have just died when I was supposed to.” 

He stays blank, quiet, as he says it, but her voice whips. “And Steve might have reached farther or held tighter so you wouldn’t have fallen at all. He might have insisted that you take a medical discharge and return home. He might have looked for your body, at least to make sure, or maybe just once asked what exactly Zola had done to you in Austria. There are a million might haves, and if you blame him for any one of them, you’ve changed even more than I thought.”

“You thought,” says Bucky, “that I’d turned into a brainwashed, flash-frozen assassin with a metal arm, so I’m not sure how much more I can change than that,” and it actually makes Peggy laugh.

“You blame yourself. Steve blames himself. I despair over the two of you for being thick-headed.” She turns her chair around, gazing out the glass onto the city, still continuing. “You certainly shouldn’t have died, Barnes. And regardless of anything you think you might have done or should be held responsible for, we would like you to come home so you can be reminded you how deeply incorrect you’ve been. Also so my daughter will stop constantly asking where you are and when you’re coming to see her again.”

She can hear crowded sounds around him, as if he’s holding the phone away from his ear. Finally he comes back. “Not yet,” he says, and hangs up.

Peggy asks Sonia not to disturb her for a bit. She takes a minutes, two minutes, five, for sadness and a smile, and then to call Steve.

There is such future and fragility in _yet_.

* * *

Steve’s semester ends. He does well despite his absences, and according to the note beside the grade on his final exam, the professor hopes he’ll come back next year. 

He’s considering it - he likes learning, likes being able to discuss with Peggy the new facts and ideas that they talk about in class - but he has plans in the meantime. Certain people know that there are more files than the ones Peggy uploaded to the internet, but Steve is the one who actually has them. He has the ones Natasha got from whatever contacts she somehow still has in Moscow, too. He knows that Bucky is alive and likely safe enough, if he can go to museums the way Peggy says he has. But if Steve is going to help him, he needs to know more about then rather than just now.

At home alone, between the forced normalcy of learning to use the new breadmaker and starting to experiment with the new pastels he bought, he looks through the information. He has to grit his teeth through it. He’ll see a picture - Bucky’s frozen face, or in-depth schematics of the way the metal arm is bonded to his shoulder - and think that’s the worst part. But then he’ll read something - how they didn’t think to develop a mouth guard until later, that they implanted words to ensure compliance, as if Bucky was a piece of machinery that they needed a failsafe for - and that will be worse.

Peggy makes him stop reading and take a run at least two hours before he goes to bed. He’s having even more trouble sleeping now. His sketchbook and the box of pastels sit vaguely dusty on the living room bookshelf.

He’s sitting outside Ella’s school one Tuesday morning, reading again. He and Peggy have eased off a bit from having someone watch all the time, but sometimes Steve still feels the need to see the safety and calm for himself. The section he is reading is encrypted, but Peggy worked out the code for him and he’s trained his brain by this point; he can read the documents only marginally slower than he could in English. The now-familiar sickness fills his gut as he sees that this particular section is a list of targets, of kills. He skims it, almost deciding to stop because it feels like something that will keep Bucky from looking him in the eye, the idea that Steve knows this. But then a name catches his attention, and another, below.

The sickness gets worse.

Steve looks up blankly. He can’t taste the coffee in his mouth, can’t hear the screaming laughter coming from the playground.

He’ll need to talk to Tony. He needs to talk to Peggy.

* * *

He flies up to New York. He and Peggy both thought that it was best.

It’s been a while since he’s been in the city. He remembers the shock of waking up and finding everything, the place where he’d spent most of his life, barely recognizable to him. The rest of the time he’d lived there, it felt like rooming with a cousin who he hadn’t seen since childhood; it was enjoyable enough, familiar enough, but the slight strangeness, the lack of full context, continued to grate and never went away. When he comes back now, he enjoys it more; it’s the twentieth century version he’s picturing returning to, so he can appreciate the familiar and the little surprises, too.

He’s let in to see Tony right away, and tells himself that’s good, that’s better. Getting it over with must be better, and there can be no reason for the overturn of his stomach.

“Cap?” Tony is clearly in some intense ball bouncing competition with himself. Steve’s surprised there isn’t a divot in the wall. He’s pretty good at it. There’s something that resembles a skateboard half disassembled on the lab bench in front of him. “Didn’t realize you’d were in the neighborhood. You just miss having a decent slice of pizza? Or good Mexican? Or Chinese, now that we’re talking about it.”

“Tony.”

“Hey!” He pushes away from the wall, barely resting his chair on the ground before he stands and transfers his bouncing to the floor. “Did you bring the kid? Is it time for Uncle Tony’s Big Apple Tour? Because I was just joking about that.”

“Stark.” Steve reaches for the ball, pulling it from midair. He almost puts it in his pocket, but changes his mind and just rests it on the table instead. It makes a soft rubber sound before stilling. “There’s something I have to show you.”

When Steve takes out the documents, Tony focuses almost immediately, his energy lasering. He’s been asking for at least some access to the files for weeks, even offering to run an automatic translation program on everything. He shoves things aside to clear a place on the bench and lets Steve put the papers down. “I’m still down for decoding if that’s what you’re here for,” he says, already shifting past Steve to squint down at the pages.

“I’ve mostly figured it out,” Steve says, closing his eyes for a tight moment. As soon as he opens them, he moves forward, shuffling through the folder to find what he wants. “This is the first version they used on him.” 

Steve’s eyes go to the notes, even now that they’re so familiar. Tony’s go to the schematics.

“Like using ten hammers to pick a lock,” he mutters, hovering a finger above the paper. “Hard to believe he even had a brain after this. This started in ‘45, ‘46? Half the doctors back then still thought that poking something sharp in there was a hot new miracle cure.” He turns to another page, peering at the blurry picture of Bucky’s blank face touched with ice. It’s hard to tell if he’s looking at Bucky himself or the machinery 

“He always hated the cold,” Steve says. He’s memorized the picture, but he puts a thumb against it anyway. “He pretended he didn’t care - didn’t want to get made fun of, and before his dad got the foreman job, he didn’t want to push for clothes they couldn’t afford - but he was always doubling his sweaters when we were kids. He made himself a new jacket because army issue was too thin. Told everyone it was so he could be the best looking of all of us.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Yeah, I’ve seen the pictures.”

“Howard put together some kind of special heated gloves for him too.”

“Probably would have...given him cancer after a while,” Tony says softly. “Guess it might have been better than what did happen.”

“He won’t talk to me.” Steve stares down at the table. “He calls Peggy, but he won’t talk to me. And I don’t even know what I’d say. Because if it had happened to me, waking up after so long and finding what they’d used me to do, I know that I wouldn’t want to face anyone. But I also know it wasn’t his fault, and I don’t know how to make him believe that.”

Tony says nothing. He clears his throat. He looks at the pages. Steve reaches over his hands. “I don’t know if reading these will make things worse,” he says. “But I don’t want him to have to hold it alone.” He finds a certain page and places it on top. “Peggy says that he seems to remember a lot. And I know there are things he’s going to remember that are worse than others.”

Certainly, with a bit of time, Tony could break the code, figure out exactly what the document says. He doesn’t seem to need to. He stands shockingly still, but his hand is shaking. “This column is dates, isn’t it?” 

Steve nods.

“Did you know,” Tony says, almost casually, gripping the edge of the table, “that I remember everything about the last time I saw my mom and dad? Yeah, I can picture it all: what we wore, what we said to each other. The stain on the carpet that I kept hoping no one would notice, mostly because I didn’t want to admit that I’d been eating nachos at 3 AM.” He looks somewhere away from Steve. “Mom was trying out a different perfume - she usually wore Elizabeth Arden, but she’d had something new made special.” As he picks up the ball, Steve almost expects him to start bouncing it again, but he rolls it distractedly under his palm on the table instead. “I can barely remember what happened after, though. There are flashes, but mostly...gone. I was drunk for a lot of it, that might be why. They said that I tried to drive to the accident site after the funeral. Don’t remember it. But I’ve looked at the pictures a thousand times.” Steve swallows; he knows that it can get worse. “My mom died second. That’s in the ME report. But they couldn’t tell me how long it was, her watching my dad, knowing he was gone. It was cold up there, and it was a while before anyone found them.”

When Tony finally looks at Steve, it’s a struggle to keep his eye. “Is that in here? Did they take good notes, your pal and his people?”

“They’re not his people,” Steve says, voice low and firm, a failed attempt at his captain’s voice.

“What does it say, Steve?” He gives a sharp push against Steve’s shoulder, moving him back a step from surprise and the desire to de-escalate, to be calm and nonreactive. “What does it say?”

Steve takes a minute to answer. “Just the date, and their names.”

“No.” Tony points at the paper, finger hard against the table, voice reinforced in the way of children’s constant hands on sandcastles with the tide coming ever inward. “There’s more. What’s it say, Cap?”

“‘December 16, 1991,’” Steve says. He knows it by heart. “‘Target Stark, Howard: terminated. Stark, Maria: collateral, terminated.’”

“Collateral,” Tony repeats with a tight nod and an indrawn breath, and punches Steve in the face. Steve could catch it, even if he hadn’t expected it, but something in the pain feels like relief. Tony says, ragged-edged, “That’s my mother you’re talking about. That’s my mother that your buddy killed, and he could barely be bothered to write down her name.”

“I don’t know how you could look at those pictures and think that it was Bucky doing any of those things. I’ve known him since we were five years old. He never would have done any of this if he’d had any choice. If he had _any_ control, he would have done anything, tried anything, to stop what they were doing to him.”

“Then he should have tried harder!” Tony shouts. “You think we all haven’t gone through bad shit?” His breath is harsh and horrible now. “I got kidnapped and stuck in a cave and I ended up making my first suit.”

Steve says, clenched, “Yeah, and imagine being trapped in that suit, watching as someone used it to kill people. Imagine being unconscious and waking up to find what had been happened by your hand when you couldn’t do anything.”

Tony shakes his head, his whole body looking aftershocked, and stands with quiet fists for a moment. Then he says softly, “He looks at you and he wakes up, good as new. He looked at my father, his friend, and killed him. He looked my mother in the face and didn’t care at all.”

“Howard was my friend too. I think Maria would have been. I–” Steve swallows. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for what happened to them, and I thought that you had a right to know about what I found. But you don’t have a right to blame Bucky for it.” He leaves the file on the table; he has other copies. “I’ll let you think about it.” He starts toward the door.

“There’s nothing to think about,” Tony calls after him. “Hey, did you ever think maybe you’re being taken for a ride? Ever think about that, Captain Righteous? You want the good old days back so badly you accept whatever the hell he feeds you?”

Steve turns back to him. “One day I think you’ll look Bucky in the eye and regret saying that,” he says, and leaves the tower. Later, he’ll realize that he remembers nothing from that point - not the return to the airport, not a TSA agent doing the standard double take at his ID, not the flight home - until he walks back through his front door and has his face against Peggy’s hair.

* * *

Amanda Carter liked to bake pies, and despite Peggy minimal interest in such things as a child, she had learned this skill before she was old enough for school. She has it mostly prepared and is just starting the lattice crust when Bucky calls.

She tucks the phone against her shoulder so she can work with both hands free as she answers. “You’ve been busy, I hear.” There had been, in certain corners of the internet, in the offices of particular members of government, subtle questions about an explosion in an officially empty area of Siberia.

“You heard where?”

“Around. Where one hears these things.” She hesitates, prodding a strip of pastry so that it lies in exact parallel, and then adds delicately, “Steve and I have been doing some reading. We wondered if something like this might be forthcoming.”

After a moment: “I planned to just...take them offline. They couldn’t live without life support, and I knew no one would find them. I don’t even know that there was anyone looking. But I got there and I was angry.”

 _Good_ , she thinks. _It’s about time_ , but she says nothing.

“It took forever to get it to blow, but I’m glad I did it.” She hears the flint in the open quiet of his voice.

“Because they were dangerous?” she asks calmly, pressing the edges of the crust one last time, conscious that she’s picked up a little something from her time with Sam.

Slowly he says, “Yes. And because they had a choice, and they chose this.”

She carries the pie over to the oven, and when she steps back, she feels in her shoulders more than the relaxation of another task complete, a job well done. She works easily in logic and puzzles, but she knows better than most that such things hold up poorly to tearing emotion. Sometimes things just have to be worked through, and it’s hard to determine what the outcome will be.

The phone is quiet against her ear as she goes to rinse her hands, but she does not look to change it. She cleans dough and sugar and flecks of peach from her palms and under her nails, looking out the window into the backyard where Steve has set up the sprinkler. He and Ella have been running around in it for a half an hour.

“You and Steve have been reading?” Bucky says finally.

“Yes.” She dries her hands slowly. “I think if you came home now, you would have a hard time getting him to stop hugging you.”

Unevenly he says, “What about you?”

“Well,” she says, allowing some tiny fraction of her anger into her voice. “If I wasn’t sure that you were taking care of things, I believe you would see some more strategic explosions.”

“I don’t think it’s strategy if it’s just to make you feel better,” he says. “And I heard that they tore down this beautiful old bank you have in DC. That seems a little like an explosion to me.”

“I’m not sure to what you’re referring. We’re building a new community garden, and that space was ideal.” She checks her hands to make sure they’re entirely clean and then turns her focus back toward the window. Ella shakes with spilling laughter as she hides behind Steve, allowing him to get the brunt of the arcing spray of water and slipping away as he chases her.

“I’m sure the community appreciates their surprise garden,” Bucky says softly.

The backyard is entirely made of mud at this point. Steve’s feet, his calves below his bathing suit, and Ella’s entire body, are filthy. “Sometimes,” Peggy says, “there is not much to do but move forward. And do a bit of cathartic destruction along the way.”

“I think I have a bit more destruction in me,” says Bucky. “Before I get to the moving forward. Or maybe as a part of it.”

She stands at the counter for a while after he hangs up. The kitchen smells sweet and she knows that she should clean up her workspace - they’re meant to leave for Sharon’s housewarming as soon as the pie is ready - but she stands for a while, and then walks out into the yard, relishing the volume of her family’s laughter, and the heat of the sun, and the chill of mud between her precisely painted toes.

* * *

“Remember to tell me if you need to get anything down from the high shelves,” Steve says as he unlocks the door and allows the three girls to barrel inside. “I haven’t forgotten the game cabinet incident.”

“We cleaned up all the pieces and all the cards, Daddy,” Ella protests.

“Yeah, Mr. Steve, even though it took four hundred hours,” Moira adds with a dragging sigh.

Steve tries to hide a smile. “Well, we don’t have quite that much time today, so let’s avoid knocking anything down, okay?”

“Let’s play dress-up,” Madeline says, changing the topic not out of some five-year-old emotional acuity but because her parents are picking her first for a dentist appointment and Ella’s dress-up trunk is overflowing.

The three stampede down the stairs to the basement, leaving Steve to shake his head and organize backpacks and shoes, even though he knows he should put his foot down and have the girls do it. He’s just finishing when a small sound from the stairs makes him whirl, arms up uselessly. He lets them drop when he sees that it’s just Peggy.

“Hey,” he says. “What are you doing home?”

“I thought about calling,” she says, “but I realized that someone needs to be here for the girls anyway.”

He can see the way she’s choosing logic over everything. “Oh,” he says, tensing. “What’s happening?”

“Bruce mentioned a few months ago that someone had been seeking him out, following him in order to gain more information about his research.”

“Gamma radiation?” Steve asks without much hope.

Peggy shakes her head. “The serum. Again. Bruce managed to avoid him, but we’ve been keeping an eye on the man, a Dr. Adam Andrews, since, and some recent footage from his hometown has caused some concern.”

A chill goes through Steve at the thought that he might have been successful, even in testing. “You’re not about to tell me about my new super serum dog sidekick, are you?”

She smiles for the first time. “A bit more grisly, I’m afraid. The local police fined him for trespassing in the local cemetery, but when we got the alert, we began to suspect that he was doing more than taking a midnight stroll.” Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, more for effect than anything else. Peggy nods. “I called Natasha and she’s waiting. Andrews has been working out of a small town in North Dakota - limited oversight, rural enough to disappear, and multiple easy access points into Canada - so Clint is close enough for backup if you need it, although I imagine that you and Tasha will be sufficient.” Neither of them mention Tony. This would probably be too small-time for him even if they were on good terms, although Steve can imagine that he would have had plenty of zombie jokes to contribute.

“Do we think he’s actually found a way to raise the dead, or he’s just using bodies experimentally?” As if either option is preferable.

“It’s unclear. I suppose it will be a nice surprise for your afternoon.”

“Just what I wanted.” Steve sighs, loosens his shoulders. “I guess I’d better suit up.”

“I’d do it on the way.” She pats his shoulder. “There are certainly becoming elements to your uniform, but subtlety around the neighborhood isn’t among them.”

He tilts his head, conceding the point. “Well, at least I won’t have to be around for pickup this time.” Madeline’s parents, the Huangs, are former Secret Service, and as such fairly accustomed to being unimpressed by fame. Moira’s parents, the Pfeiffers, have known him for nearly a year and are still awkward and fawning around him; her father always seems to want to pound his back and call him “Steve, buddy.”

There’s a shriek from downstairs and they pause, waiting to see if it will be followed by more screaming or crying, or hushed attempts at subtle cover-up. But the laughter begins almost immediately, and Steve and Peggy relax again. 

“Natasha has all the information. I’m sure she’ll fill you in on the way.”

Steve doubts there are too many more known details; they’re still working out the information network. He also questions whether anything that Natasha can tell him will convince him that his presence is really required on this particular mission. But that’s just why he has to go. This is a test for both of them. She’s sent him into danger before, but at a time when he might have been able to pick her perfume out of a crowd, but had never as much as touched her bare hand. It’s been years and a recreated world since then. They have to ensure they’re ready for it again.

* * *

A little over twenty-four hours later, Peggy is sitting up in bed with her laptop in front of her. Steve had returned home about forty minutes earlier and had gone immediately into the shower. 

“I’ll tell you what happened in a bit,” he’d called through the curtain. “And maybe in fifteen or twenty years I’ll actually think it’s funny. But for now, I think I live in here.”

She had texted Natasha and received back after a half hour a picture of familiar eyebrows just below a towel turban and the words, ‘He isn’t wrong.’

Lucky Peggy has plenty of practice making all sorts of things sound official. She had, after all, been the one to suggest that “We used the parachutes to try to disguise Bucky as a Czech milkmaid because he was the prettiest” could be rendered equally truthfully as “Available material was repurposed in a partially successful attempt at espionage. Sgt. Barnes selected due to most appropriate physical condition.” She remembers the lot of them following her around headquarters, desperate to jot down her suggestions before she reached her meeting and shut the door in their faces because they weren’t cleared to be inside.

Shaking her head, she returns to her computer, only glancing over distractedly when her phone begins to vibrate.

“Heard you sent the Captain and Natasha out for the best Saturday night North Dakota has to offer,” Tony says.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Texting with Natasha. Well, Pepper was. But she won’t give details.” There’s a bald sort of wheedling in his voice, a man who expects things as soon as he gets near asking for them.

“I certainly can’t either,” she tells him, reaching over and stealing Steve’s pillow. She sticks in behind her back to prop herself up further. “My best source for information seems to have no plans for rejoining me outside the shower.”

He says, “This wrangling gig must be harder than you thought,” and she keeps her voice light and innocent as she replies, “If gathering information from Steve in the shower is the extent of things, I think I’ll be just fine.”

“Gross,” he says immediately. “Didn’t need to hear it, didn’t need to know it.” There’s a beat of silence, a pause during which she waits for him to toss in the expected additional smart remark. But instead he adds slowly, “Speaking of wrangling, I have some information, and since you’re the new boss lady, I figured you should have it too.”

“Oh?” From the bathroom, she hears the wheezing sound of the shampoo bottle giving up its last dregs, then a clatter as Steve tosses it into the wastebasket.

“I know everyone’s pretty busy - rock and roll all night, party every day and all - but I’ve been working on the next step, and I think I have something.”

They all agreed that the next step was not only continuing to protect the earth from threats better suited to science fiction, but finally cutting off the heads of HYDRA, finishing work that, until recently, they hadn’t realized still needed to be finished. The document that arrives in her email inbox seems to go a long way in helping with that. 

“Are these confirmed?” she asks.

“As much as they can be. I don’t know that we’ll ever get the list of every security guard and janitor who secretly thought he was mopping for the HYDRA cause, but this is a start. SHIELD employees, SHIELD contacts who apparently didn’t read the big NO NAZIS print in their contracts.”

“Some of these,” Peggy says, scrolling through the file, eyes picking out about a half dozen names, “have dates of death within the last few weeks.”

“Yeah.” Tony clears his throat casually. “A couple died in the hospital, but I wanted to make sure to keep track of them so we could do a web crawl of their networks, see who they worked with, who worked under them, whose ears they might have whispered in along the way.”

“And the others?” 

“It looks like someone else has been checking off some of the same people on this list.” The fact that Tony doesn’t speculate as to who makes Peggy realize that they both suspect the same person.

“I understand your feelings,” she says to Tony as the shower finally shuts off, “but when Bucky comes home I’ll be asking him if he’d like to continue working through this.”

Tony sits in raw quiet for a while as Peggy listens to Steve rattling softly around the bathroom. “I really don’t think you can understand my feelings,” he finally says. “But you can tell Cap– Tell Steve that I’ve been looking through the papers he left, and I might have a couple ideas about how to reverse trigger word control conditioning.”

Sitting very still, Peggy says, “Oh, really?”

“Yeah.” He gives his throat a blustery clear. “You know Helen Cho - brilliant doctor, obviously begged to work with me up here?”

“We’ve met,” Peggy says, “and I’ll be reporting that half truth to her directly.”

“Anyway, maybe next time you guys are in New York, we could sit down with her, see what she has to say.”

“Steve and I have been meaning to schedule a weekend away.”

Tony laughs. “You two really need to figure out how to relax.”

“I assure you that we’ve had some practice,” Peggy says, glancing up to see the steam curl out of the now-open bathroom door ahead of Steve’s entrance. “Speaking of which…” She mouths Tony’s name to Steve, watching as his face slips through shock and relief, ending in a tentative, questioning smile. 

“I’ve gotta go,” Tony says, “but I want just one little piece of mission recap before I do.”

Peggy looks up at Steve. He sighs, adjusting the towel wrapped around his hips, and squints upward a little. “He liked pop music, said it made all the dead bodies in a basement lab less creepy. The entire time Nat and I were disarming traps and sneaking around and getting into fights, we were doing it to Beyoncé.”

Tony cackles so loudly they wonder if he’s going to wake Ella. Peggy smiles and takes Steve’s hand, kissing his knuckles. She’ll say it more professionally later, but she’s proud of him.

* * *

“Thanks for doing this, Sam,” Steve says, balancing his sleep-heavy daughter against himself with one arm so he can wrap the other around his friend.

“No problem, man. I’m just glad a celebrity like yourself would come celebrate his big birthday out here on my rooftop. I heard that the president had a bid in.”

“That’s where I really wanted to go,” Steve cracks, “but can you imagine this one in the White House? If she breaks your stuff, I shell out five bucks for new Ikea, I don’t make national headlines.”

“‘Scuse you, I’m a Pottery Barn man, and I’ll be charging you the full price,” Sam says, mock strict even with all his teeth showing.

Peggy finishes her conversation with Maria Hill and leans over to them. “If we’re at arguments over home furnishings, I think it’s time to be going. Also, I saw that the little princess conned nearly everyone here into giving her a piece of cake, and when she starts vomiting up red, white, and blue icing, I’d prefer it to be at our house rather than on the street.”

As they turn to go, Maria says to Sam, “Every time, I tell myself that I’m not going to be fooled by the ‘Auntie Maria, you’re my favorite’ routine, and every time…” Sam just laughs. Steve knows for a fact that Ella got two pieces of cake from him, and didn’t even have to convince him the second time.

They make their way through the party, nodding goodbyes, and duck under the Happy Birthday banner to climb down the stairs from Sam’s roof. The slight gunpowder scent from the fireworks is more obvious when they step out again onto the street.

They don’t talk much on the way home. Ella dozes steadily, worn from the sugar-fueled hours of anticipation. Waiting at a crosswalk for the light to change, Peggy leans on Steve and he puts his arm around her, the two of them closing their eyes together, ignoring for a moment the group of drunken young men in Uncle Sam costumes coming up the street.

“It was a good birthday?” she asks as they approach their block.

He says, “Of course it was,” and means it earnestly, but knows by her kind look that he’s once again tried and failed to completely cover the part of him that is disappointed.

“He’ll come when he’s ready,” she says quietly. “And in the meantime, there are a few hours left to the day, and I still haven’t done the traditional centenary jumping out of a cake.”

“I’ve never heard of that tradition,” he says, deadpan, as something near their house catches his eye. He works not to lose his rhythms in an obvious way. “Must be English.”

“I’m not surprised it hasn’t made its way to your barbarous country.” She tosses her hair to punctuate it, flicking her gaze to the same spot as she does.

“Well, the barbarians here are going to be a little hard-pressed to make you a giant cake at 11 P.M. on a federal holiday.” He shifts Ella a little, indicating that she should take point.

She’s already casually leaning against a streetlight, adjusting her shoe or the ankle holster she has just above it. “I have my ways.”

Steve hangs back as Peggy proceeds toward the walk ahead of him. He has to be able to get Ella to safety if things erupt, but stays in range to see and hear everything.

“Don’t hide,” Peggy says firmly, gun visible but currently non-threatening. 

“Then don’t point guns at me, Carter,” Bucky says, stepping from the shadowy pool of their bushes.

Steve stands frozen for a long moment, staring until Peggy, her gun holstered once more, comes to take Ella out of his arms. He walks forward then, to where his best friend stands looking cocky in the way that means that he’s nervous. He rests one arm around Bucky, waits, then moves the other. It takes Bucky a minute to relax, but that’s fine. Steve’s hug lasts for a long time, even as Bucky says, slightly strangled, working an arm loose to wave to Peggy, “I think I might have preferred the gun.”

“No you wouldn’t’ve,” Steve says. “Shut up, asshole.”

“Yeah,” he says, giving Steve a little pat on the back. “Okay. Happy birthday, Steve.”

Finally Peggy moves past them to unlock the door. She kisses Bucky on the cheek as she does. “Welcome back, Barnes. We’re glad to have you.”


	4. Chapter 4

Somewhere along the way, Bucky has learned how to make breakfast.

“Truck stops’ll hire a surly cook with a metal arm and no resume, but you do have to know how to scramble an egg,” he tells them as he flips the frittata he’s working on.

“So how did you learn?” Steve asks carefully. Mrs. Barnes was an excellent cook, but Steve has clear memories of exactly what Bucky thought of as a well-made meal the last time they had regular access to a kitchen.

Bucky turns the flame down a bit on the stove. “YouTube.”

“Why is it,” Steve says, “that the two of you got on Google and YouTube like you read the instruction manual and I had to spy on people for six weeks before I realized a mouse and a trackpad were the same thing?”

Bucky and Peggy trade glances. “I don’t think you want the answer to that question, buddy,” Bucky says, and dodges out of the way of the smack Steve aims at him, laughing.

Bucky looks good. He’s not underfed and his clothes are decent, although he is wearing a long-sleeved shirt even in the muggy weather of D.C. in July. His hair is pulled back in a bun using an elastic of Peggy’s; she’d taken one look at the single, stretched-out band that he’d been using and thrown it away.

His smiles take their place truly on his face, nearly always.

“Can it be time now?” Ella says, entering the room with her toy binoculars around her neck.

“A little patience, please,” her parents say simultaneously.

She frowns, flipping the binoculars over so she is viewing everything at distorted, miniature distance. “But I did that already.” 

“Sometimes it takes a little longer,” Bucky tells her, “but it might be worth it.”

Just the fact that Bucky, finally returned, is the one saying it mollifies her a bit, but not enough. She huffs and puts a little stomp in her step as she returns to the living room.

Bucky turns back to the stove. “How much does she know?” he asks.

“About what?” Peggy asks, pouring herself more coffee. Steve passes her the cream from his side of the table.

“About me.”

“She knows that you’re our friend, that you’ve been my friend for a long time. That we thought that you were gone, but we’re happy to be wrong. That some hard things happened to you. That you needed some time by yourself, and might need more.” Steve wishes that Bucky would turn around, but contents himself with the fact that he’s here at all, and looking well. “She knows that we’ve been hoping that you would come back, and that we’re glad you’re here.”

“It really smells very delicious in there,” Ella calls, her voice angling and amplified through her toy microphone.

“Good,” Bucky calls back, snapping off the burner and turning around. “Because it’s ready.”

* * *

Sam meets Bucky because when Bucky asked to go on a run, Steve automatically went to his regular route, which is also Sam’s regular route.

There’s not much conversation to be had as the two of them repeatedly lap Sam’s respectable pace, but after, they walk Sam home and chat.

“And make sure he takes you to the farmer’s market over by theirs on the weekend. There’s a guy who does plum jam that’ll make you want to cry.” He holds out a hand, and Bucky shakes it firmly.

“Now we have Saturday plans,” he tells Steve, who smiles.

Steve calls Sam later, dropping in subtle questions until Sam disabuses him of the notion of his own subtlety.

“Just ask,” he says.

“How did he seem to you?” Steve asks.

“Considering the circumstances? I think he’s a goddamn miracle. And he needs some major help. Probably more than I can give, even if I didn’t think there would be a conflict of interest.” He reads Steve’s discouraged silence correctly. “But there are a couple of colleagues I can reach out to. Obviously he’s a pretty specific case, but I know people who’ve worked with long-term POWs, soldiers and civilians who’ve been tortured or brainwashed. We can find someone for him to talk to if he wants it.”

Sharon meets Bucky when she drops by unannounced and startles him in the living room. Peggy comes downstairs at the commotion and finds Sharon holstering her service weapon.

“Aunt Peggy,” Sharon says, “I don’t mean to tell you how to run your house–”

“Excellent,” Peggy says crisply. “Now that we’ve avoided wasting time on that, perhaps instead we could come into the kitchen. Barnes allowed himself to be convinced to make Ella’s special chocolate chip-walnut-raisin-M&M brownies and I’d like to be rid of as many as possible.”

When Natasha comes over for game night, they give her some warning beforehand, but she’s the only friend they trust not to make a scene anyway. 

As he sees the careful nothing of their gazes when they first see each other, Steve makes a note to press Natasha a little further. There’s something there beyond a single moment of being assassin and target.

Tony meets Bucky under the relative best circumstances. Peggy’s managed to get a lead on Brock Rumlow, who had disappeared from the hospital before the doctors had even realized he was conscious enough for that to be a concern. 

The participation of all the Avengers is partly because they don’t want to underestimate someone with strong links to whatever poisonous, smoldering remains there are of HYDRA, and partly because they each want to: dousing those remains, tracking Rumlow, is personal. Even Thor opts to participate, if only because he is on world, Jane has been asked to step in delivering a conference keynote in the place of a colleague, Darcy has the flu, and he’d gotten a little bored of sitting in an apartment watching Netflix.

Bucky and Steve are the last to be picked up. It’s early morning at an airfield in Maryland. Peggy drove them, and they stand beside the car now. If Bucky closes his eyes, the sound of birds and the soft air, the scent of dew, could be anywhere in the world.

“Try to be back in a timely manner,” Peggy says as they prepare to board.

“Are you going to miss us that much?” Steve asks lightly.

“No, but Maria will be in town on Wednesday and we’re planning on going out for drinks. I’d hate to have to actually search for a babysitter.”

“We’ll be there.” Steve puts an arm around her waist and rests his forehead against her hair, if only for a moment. “And don’t think that just because we’re gone you can watch the next episode of Bake Off. We’ll know.”

She kisses him, not in a perfunctory way, but not showing off either. After, she turns and takes Bucky’s hands in hers. She squeezes them.

“You’ve made it this far,” she tells him, and they turn to climb onto the jet.

The layout inside is just as Steve and Peggy had described, down to the positions of the rest of the team. Natasha, legs folded on her seat, is already familiar. Thor, Banner, and Barton, are easy to identify from the descriptions. Bucky exchanges nods with Banner and, when he turns for a moment in the pilot’s seat after takeoff, Barton, but doesn’t go far into introductions or small talk. Thor, leaning against a wall, looks as if he is accustomed to a more boisterous greeting and only holds back because he’s been apprised of some details of the situation.

Stark sits with his back against one wall, his legs stretched on the bench seat in front of him, his stillness poised. 

Bucky can see Howard in his face. It makes it better, and worse.

“I’m sorry,” he says, before a smart, barbed remark can come between them, before anyone can try to smooth over and conceal it all.

“I’ve heard from plenty of people,” Stark says, casual, simmering, “that you have nothing to be sorry for.” He unwraps a piece of gum, and folds it into his mouth.

Bucky can feel Steve at his shoulder, but doesn’t turn. “It was my hands that did it,” Bucky says. “I have the memories, now.”

The silence clenches over all of them. Bucky keeps his eyes focused forward, keeps his feet stable.

“My dad had all these stories about his friend Bucky Barnes. He was always proud that he’d known you. Maybe he would have told me to forgive you.” Tony fiddles with the gum wrapper, flattening it between his fingers. “I’m not doing it for that. I’m not doing it for my mother either. She’d be elegantly pissed that she didn’t even get to see me graduate. I’m doing it because I’m the only one around who can. And maybe you deserve it, maybe you don’t, but I think in a way, it happened to you too.” He swings his legs around, tilts his head toward the now empty seat beside him. “Sit. I’ve got a couple of ideas for how to make you a little more Swiss arm-y.”

As Bucky goes to sit, everyone else begins to move again, time unfrozen. Barton announces they have another half hour of flight time. Natasha asks the room in general what snacks can be found for her. And Thor, his voice a booming attempt at a whisper, leans over to Steve and says, “It is good of Stark to forgive him. I recall the first time Loki threatened my family and my home world, I clung to my anger.”

“Really?” Steve says. “For how long?”

“Oh, several days, at least.”

Steve nods solemnly, and goes to take his own seat. From the corner of his eye, Bucky sees Steve’s shoulders shift subtly, and can tell that he is laughing.

(Rumlow isn’t there when they arrive, but they all know that there will be another day.)

* * *

“I just think that you’re overlooking the social implications of it.” Steve leans forward, placing his hands folded on the table in front of him. There’s a tough set to his mouth as he looks directly at Peggy.

She shakes her head. “And I think you’re overidentifying and overstating what’s actually in evidence.”

“Getting me to identify is part of the job. And don’t tell me,” he says, “that you hear the ‘it’s our time, down here’ speech and feel nothing.”

“It’s effective in its way,” she admits. “But you’re never going to convince me that _The Goonies_ is the best film of the 1980s. Certainly we can agree that parts of it are problematic at best.” She finishes off her drink and looks at him over the rim of the glass. “And besides, Harrison Ford was doing his level best during that decade.”

He rolls his eyes and for the first time in several hours looks around the restaurant. At some unnoticed point, the small dining room has gone from crowded to nearly empty. Make that fully empty, actually; the last couple that Steve had thought were patrons was actually the hostess talking to a waiter.

When he looks back at Peggy, she is grinning wryly over the glasses and scattered plates with dessert remnants, apparently having made the same observation.

“Time flies, as they say. Lucky that we had no other plans for the evening.”

“I can think of a couple of things for us to do,” he says, and within three minutes, they’ve paid the bill (including a tip even larger than normal; the restaurant was still open, so they hadn’t technically overstayed their welcome, but there was a spirit to these laws) and exited into the slight chill of the night air.

They hold hands as they walk, glad that they told Bucky not to expect them home anytime soon. There’s a bit of residual nervousness to leaving him at home with Ella, the idea of her occasional tantrums and the careful balance of Bucky’s experiences that he tries to hide prevalent in both of their minds, but things had been quiet for weeks, and they needed a night for themselves. A year ago they had a good division of roles, a routine for things, but now, with all the added concerns - HYDRA, Peggy’s new job, and Steve’s increased fieldwork - things have fractured and spiraled and it’s harder to keep them in hand. Time like this is important.

Steve,” Peggy says casually after a few minutes. “You do realize we were supposed to take a turn about three minutes ago?”

“Sure,” he replies. “But I did say that I could think of a couple of things for us to do.”

He stops then, and looks up. She follows his gaze. The slightly grimy sign above the doorway reads Capital Billiards Lounge.

“It’s been a while since I saw you wipe the floor with someone in a game of pool,” Steve says, a smile teasing his mouth.

She looks at him for a moment, serious with sparkling eyes. Neither of them is dressed for a place like this, she in a fuschia silk dress she’d found in a shop labeled vintage, he in a neatly ironed, vividly blue Oxford, sleeves carefully cuffed to the elbow. She squeezes his hand. “You know,” she says confidently, “I’m going to marry you one of these days.”

The smile stays, even as he stares breathlessly. People are detouring around them on the sidewalk, annoyed. “Just tell me when. I’ll be there.”

She kisses him then, until she can feel it all over, until his hands begin to wander. She breaks away. “I’ll let you know,” she says, and leads him inside.

Without arguing, without wanting to, he follows her.

* * *

Bucky wakes in the dark, and for a second, two, doesn’t know where he is.

But then, like taking in air after a dive, it all rushes back.

“It’s okay.” Steve’s voice, quiet, from somewhere to his right. The cabin lights have been turned down and everyone is spread out, exhausted from another attempt to yank another HYDRA agent out of hiding.

Maybe it’s being back in Europe that does it, maybe it’s just the lack of a real opportunity for sleep that is important according to the therapist friend of Sam’s who he’s started seeing, but the nightmares are always worse when they do missions like this. From the look on Steve’s face, he seems to know it, too.

“Don’t say it.” Bucky’s voice comes out grated.

“I have to,” Steve says, because he’s stubborn and self-righteous. Bucky sits up, brings his knees closer against his chest. He flexes the fingers of his right hand, still in its leather uniform glove. “This is just getting worse for you, and if you’re not going to pull yourself out, I’ll do it for you.”

“That’s not your call,” Bucky says, even though in the sense of ranks and paperwork, it is. “This is just as much my mission as yours. More. It’s the only way I have to fight back.”

“You don’t have to fight,” Steve says, voice lower still.

More tired than bitter: “Earth’s mightiest heroes are on the case, I know. But they did this to me, Steve. They had me for seventy years that I’ll never be able to get back. So a part of me wants to get back at them. And the rest just wants to make sure it never happens again.”

Steve bends closer, though none of the others have given sign of stirring, not even Clint, dozing up front with the autopilot activated. “Doesn’t change that the nightmares are worse when we do this.”

“You don’t understand.”

“You think I don’t get nightmares? You think I don’t sit up with Peggy after hers?”

“And you two don’t step away.” Some things, like Steve’s stubbornness, haven’t changed over the years. Some things have. Bucky has an iron stubbornness of his own now. “You think there’s nothing keeping me here? I’m here for the same reasons you are, pal.”

Steve has his hands dangling between his knees. He drops his head for a moment. “I just want to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. The things you’ve gone through...far as I’m concerned, you should have a house on a private island, and just get to stay out there.”

For the first time since he woke up - since before that - Bucky gives a little smile. “It’s a pretty tempting offer. I’ll have to pass, though.” He looks at Steve with a bit of a squint, careful. “I’ve been thinking about a house, though. Or an apartment. I’ve been bothering you and Peg long enough. I think I might need to get my own place.”

“No–”

“Steve–”

“Buck, listen.” Steve’s words are fierce, nearly physical. “If it’s something you really need, I’ll be with you, you know I will. But it’s only been six weeks, and we love having you around. Don’t leave because you think it’s better for us.”

“Like you’ve never tried to pull that on me?” If they were side by side, Bucky would knock his shoulder. “I’ve been down, Steve, but I’m not done. Stop acting like I am.”

Steve leans back a little. He shakes his head. “Peggy warned me about that.”

“There’s a reason we listen to her.”

“If it gets to be too much, you have to tell her. She’ll know anyway, and if you don’t, she’ll just be mad at us both.”

“Well,” Bucky says, “we can’t have that.” The smile he trades with Steve feels like a new one, older somehow, but sweeter for it. When he leans back again, his brain feels a little looser. He’s ready to try for more sleep.

* * *

Steve thought about getting tickets for a Nationals game when they were doing one of their salutes to the military, when people would be more aware, less easily put off by a prosthetic or someone jumping a bit when the crowd got loud and pressing.

But Bucky says that he doesn’t want any “thank you for your service” fuss anyway, he’ll be fine, and Steve’s trying to trust that he’ll say if he isn’t. Besides, Ella doesn’t want to wait until the next game in April, and Sam has nothing scheduled, so they dig up some T-shirts and ball caps and leave Peggy to her library book and a cup of tea.

(“Believe me,” she says when they ask one last time if she wants to come. “I’ll enjoy myself much more here.”)

The game is against the Brewers, so it’s not exactly a full crowd, but the weather is beautiful, the mood rippling through the field high, and there are plenty of arguments to be had about the obscenity of certain modern baseball rules.

Steve takes Ella to the bathroom and to get a pretzel during the fourth inning. She bounces and wriggles the whole time, eager to get back. They had showed a boy catching a foul ball at the bottom of the second and Ella’s sure that she’ll get the next one, no matter how many times Steve and Sam and Bucky try to explain the laws of physics versus their seat placement.

The refreshments line isn’t long, and they move up quickly. Steve is about to ask Ella if she wants a drink too, despite the way the prices make him want to put his face in his hands. But before he can, someone behind them goes, “Like the cap, cutie pie.”

A new man has joined the line behind them, middle aged, with ragged blond hair spiking out from underneath his own cap. From the smell, Steve guesses that he’s there for another beer.

“Thanks,” he tells the man tightly, keeping a hold on Ella’s hand. He puts a hand on her shoulder to move her one place up. They’re nearly at the front.

“Nice to see a dad taking his kid to a ball game,” the guy continues, his voice just a touch too loud. Ella is very still, watching him closely. “Lots of dads and kids here today, huh?” He leans forward and tips up the brim of Ella’s cap. “Bet you’re happy Daddy got you a souvenir aren’t you?”

A few things happen nearly at once: Ella says in a small, brave voice, “Please don’t touch my hat,” Steve tugs Ella behind him and pushes the man a step away from them, and the man’s arm is yanked back.

“I think it’s time to leave,” Bucky says, tossing the man away so he stumbles a few steps and stands silent and seething, massaging his shoulder. The woman behind the concession counter says, “Should I call security?”

“No, I’m leaving,” the guy says, glaring at them one last time before scuffing away. Steve notes with relief that he seems to be sitting in another section altogether, but he’ll be keeping an eye out.

The woman offers Ella anything she wants free of charge, but they just get the planned pretzel, along with a drink for Bucky, pay, and head back to their own seats.

“I got thirsty,” Bucky says quietly as they head back. Steve is resisting the urge to pick Ella up; he doesn’t want her scared even more. “Glad I didn’t just text you.”

When they’re back in their seats and Sam is catching Ella up on the game, with elaborate hand gestures that are actually making her giggle, Steve leans over. “There’s a reason I didn’t give her a godfather when she was born,” he says. “It’s always been yours if you want it.”

Bucky takes a sip of his drink. “I do want it,” he says. “But I think the actual reason you didn’t give her a godfather was things were pretty screwed up for all of us around that time.”

Steve stares at him, eyebrows up for a moment, before he shakes his head and laughs. He opens his mouth, but before he can even think of anything to say, there’s a small _thwack_ and he turns just in time to see the laws of physics bent, just for today, as a foul ball ricochets and lands right in his daughter’s lap.

* * *

Peggy reminds them over and over that they can have the swingset delivered pre-built, but the other two just laugh at her. They have the instructions and all the parts and a toolbox. They can do it themselves.

By midmorning, the pieces are scattered throughout the grass, and the section they’ve managed to put together looks precarious, no matter how many times Steve tries to insist that it’s just a little creative.

By midafternoon, Peggy has actually put on a pair of jeans to join them, her hair up in a bandana. (“Didn’t I see you on a poster once?” Steve teases. He stops when she threatens to _accidentally_ drop a couple of the screws in the grass and make him go searching for them.)

As evening falls, Ella finally gets a chance to clamber around the new structure, exploring their hard work. Bucky and Peggy sit on the back stoop. When Steve returns from the kitchen with beers, he squeezes in with them.

They sit quietly for a while in the beckoning twilight, drinking more out of a feeling of tradition than anything else; their tolerance - natural (Peggy) or enhanced - keeps it from having much effect.

Peggy has been watching Steve. There is something overwhelming in his face. Finally she puts a hand on his knee. “What is it?”

“No, nothing, it’s–” Steve picks at the label on his beer, collecting himself. “I’m just thinking how damn lucky I am. I’ve got my best friend and my best girl both here. The two of you went through so much and I just had it fall into my lap.” 

For a moment there’s stunning, pensive silence. Then Bucky and Peggy each reach over and smack him in the back of the head.

“We didn’t get through it for you,” Peggy reminds him. “Certainly not for your outsized ego.”

“And even if we did,” says Bucky, “it’s not like you were just sitting around doing nothing.” He nudges Steve in the side. “It’s hard work, dragging around guilt that isn’t yours.”

Peggy turns to Steve. “He’s not wrong.” Then she turns to Bucky. “He’s being quiet because he doesn’t want to accuse you of hypocrisy.”

“He’s never had a problem accusing me before,” Bucky says.

“Maybe I’m growing,” Steve says, finishing off his beer. “Learning to appreciate the things I have.”

“Mama, come push me!” Ella calls. She’s managed to get herself onto the higher of the two swings through a combination of pulling, jumping, and squirming.

Peggy raises her voice: “Daddy’s coming now.” She presses her palm against Steve’s shoulder so that he rocks exaggeratedly to his feet. “Go appreciate that.”

Steve stretches his arms, looking around their yard, smaller than it was yesterday with the swingset taking up space. It’ll feel smaller tomorrow when they’re hosting everyone for a Labor Day barbecue. Steve’s grilling; he can’t imagine it will be pretty.

“Believe me, I do.”

* * *

Ella starts school. 

“–and Mina’s big sister says that we get library _two_ times every week.” Ella swings herself between her parents’ hands as they approach the school.

“Two times a week?” Steve asks. “You’re going to have finished the whole library by November.” He nods as Bucky approaches from the side and falls into step with them. He has his own apartment now, though they’ve kept his room at their house too. (The other morning, Steve stopped by to see if Bucky wanted to go for a run and found Natasha sitting in Bucky’s kitchen eating a bagel. Peggy had been insufficiently surprised when he’d told her.)

“Well, there are chapter books in there,” says Peggy, squeezing Ella’s hand as she automatically scans the crowd in front of the school, the redbrick building familiar by now in more than just a picturesque, classic sense. “Maybe December.”

“Sounds like you’re being challenged, kiddo,” Bucky says.

“No, it’s just joking because they think I’m smart,” Ella says confidently.

Steve says, “I think that proves it,” and they reach the schoolyard. Moira and Madeline are already there, along with a half dozen other kids who Steve recognizes: Charlie and Bebe and Henry, Cooper, Rosemary...their faces are just a touch sharper and more defined, their bodies a bit taller than they were last year. 

Ella breaks away immediately upon seeing her friends, but returns at the simultaneous, “Hey!” from her three escorts. She backtracks and stands before them, bright-eyed and expectant.

“Show ‘em,” Bucky tells her, tapping her chin with a finger before the two of them attempt to remember the overly complicated handshake they’ve created together.

Peggy bends and cups Ella’s face in her hands. She kisses one cheek. “Brilliant girl.” She kisses the other. “Stand tall.” She kisses Ella’s forehead and then catches her eye. “Be kind.”

For a moment, Steve kneels by Ella without saying anything. Her hair has darkened to nearly Peggy’s shade, but her eyes look exactly as they have from the moment he saw them. She waits for him with just a bare trace of impatience on her face. He remembers the way she fit in two hands the first time he held her, how she sometimes trips downstairs and curls up sleepily in his lap when he comes back from a run early in the morning. He loves her so much. Finally, he hugs her. “Have a good day, sweetheart,” he says, and lets her go.

They watch from the gate as she runs across the asphalt, backpack flapping a bit, to reach her friends. They all chatter briefly together before a teacher comes, and then the whole group starts up the steps. Just at the door, Ella turns and grins one final time.

One day they’ll have horrible, incredible things to tell her. One day it will be harder to protect her from the world, at least from the terrible mundanities that they’ll have fought to allow her: bad grades, arguments with friends, first love and heartbreak. But today she wants to learn karate and six types of dance, how to play softball and how to play chess. She wants to be a teacher and a chef and a firefighter and work in a big office like Mama. She wants to wear goggles like they do in science class on TV, to take long trips and write books about them. She wants to make art. She wants playdates every day and stories read every night, and they want to give it all to her.

“Coffee?” Peggy offers, wiping a tear delicately from the corner of Steve’s eye. He wraps an arm around her waist and she curves into him easily.

“I know just the place,” he says, and, together, the three of them turn away and walk down the street, toward whatever is ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's done! Hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so we're doing this, mostly just because I wanted to, not because anyone else really did. It's prewritten, four chapters, deals directly with Winter Soldier, and refers obliquely to the events of Woman Borne so I'd probably read that first if you're comfortable although a vague notion of the plotline there will generally get you through this one. I'll be posting on Fridays.
> 
> Also: I have taken and gently shifted the entire post-Avengers canon timeline of the MCU and I'm not sorry for it. This takes place in 2018, and would have taken place later if I'd needed it too. I'm not scared anymore. (Not true; I'm terrified of mostly everything.)
> 
> Unbeta'd, so if you see typos, a quick, polite mention would be great.


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